


(that breathless moment of first touch)

by lareine



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Hydra shenanigans, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Red Room shenanigans, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Worldbuilding, everyone is a badass, the slowest of burns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-27 10:54:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6281749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lareine/pseuds/lareine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Who taught you to write in blood on my back? Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons? You have scored your name into my shoulders, referenced me with your mark."<br/>—Jeanette Winterson</i>
</p><p><b>Part I (of IV): Changes</b><br/>"I hear soulmates eventually turn into the same person,” Dum Dum said.<br/>Bucky snorted hard.</p><p> </p><p>Or, the author got bit hard by a plot bunny promising soulmate feels and got waaaay too into worldbuilding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was not expecting this. I mean, I sort of knew what I was getting into cause Nat and Bucky + Hydra and Red Room = tragedy and all the bad things. But damn, I was not expecting to be hit in the face with all of the unknown baggage of Steve Grant Rogers. Thanks Steve. (Sorry Steve.)
> 
> Additional warnings: In this chapter, non-p.c. terms of disability, references to ableism, heavy values dissonance thanks to 1930s old timey-ness, period-typical racial slurs, self-esteem issues, and basically all of the health issues
> 
> (P.S. Formatting this made me cry; have pity on a new ao3 author and leave me any tips!)

_July 4, 1918—Brooklyn, NYC_

The baby was born sickly and barely breathing. The midwife, sent from the Maternity Center Association, clucked over the pale mother, changed the sheets to worn, but clean linens, and carefully washed and swaddled the baby, who was making little noises that were a pale shade of real crying.

“It’s a boy, Sarah,” the midwife said, placing him in Sarah’s arms. “He’ll grow big and strong for you—make his father proud, I’m sure.”

Sarah’s head moved listlessly on the sweat-soaked pillow, her blond hair dark with sweat, and the midwife winced as she remembered that the husband had been killed in action in the Great War. She bustled around the small apartment just to look busy, noting the empty cupboards in the tiny kitchen with dismay. Where were the relatives, friends, or at least neighbors to congratulate and help a new mother? She heard a faint whisper and hurried back to the bed.

“Is he marked?” Sarah said faintly, the pallor of her skin almost blending into the sheets.

The midwife had given him the usual check-over when she’d washed him; she couldn’t believe she hadn’t said—it was the second thing mentioned after gender; Mary and Joseph her misstep in mentioning the father had really rattled her nerves hadn’t it.

“Yes, on his left wrist,” she said. “Looks quite nice, all geometric and all.”

“Good...good,” Sarah murmured. “Someone...will love my baby...like he deserves....”

“Don’t start fretting,” the midwife said. “It’ll be the death of you if you don’t learn to let go and leave it to God.”

“Can’t let go,” Sarah said, a little more strongly. “Things...get taken away too easily as it is.”

“Hush now and rest, you stubborn girl,” the midwife sighed.

She cleaned up the rest of the messy process of birth, keeping one eye fixed on the quiet babe in his mother arms. To her experienced eye, it looked to be a hard life ahead of him, even without factoring in the worrying state of the pantry. She understood, too, the cold practicality that underlay Sarah’s idealistic statement on the mark; it didn’t happen regularly, but it happened frequently enough that it was a real chance that the baby could be bonded to some rich little girl or boy and whisked away to a new life, regardless of his background.

The baby opened its mouth and let out a weak squall.

“I hope you’ve got your ma’s stubbornness, little man,” the midwife said. “You’re going to need it.”

 

_September 1930—Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan_

“Steve Rogers, been in the orphanage on eighth since my ma....”

His voice trailed off, and both of their eyes widened comically at each other, frozen in the middle of their handshake. Steve’s eyes darted all over the guy, trying to capture as many details of him as quickly as he could, trying to process that this was his _soulmate._ He had arresting blue-green eyes, brown hair flopping into his eyes, and a mouth that looked like it was meant for smirking, when it wasn’t hanging open in shock.

A small part of Steve, which he immediately stomped on, wistfully said goodbye to the fantasy of his soulmate being some rich dame who’d whisk him into a mansion and could afford the best doctors and hospitals for his ma and himself. It didn’t matter, because this guy was the one for him, was his.

They stared at each other for so long, it made Steve jump when he said,

“James Buchanan Barnes. But call me Bucky.”

“Yeah—Bucky,” Steve said, rolling the name in his mouth, an enormous grin stretching his face, happiness swelling up in him. It was almost too much emotion; he hadn’t had much time or opportunity to feel much of anything so nice.

“You need to be back to the orphanage or something?” Bucky said, running his left hand through his hair, still looking poleaxed. Steve felt like he was floating and his sole anchor to concrete sensation was Bucky’s right hand still clasped around his. “Cause if not, my ma would probably like to meet you.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, still grinning stupidly. He kind of wondered if his face would be stuck like that forever, but decided it didn’t matter. “Hold on, you wanna see, you know, the mark?”

Steve brought up his left arm to his mouth to try and work off the brown strip of cloth of his wrist with his teeth. Bucky slid his hand out of Steve’s and Steve felt a brief sense of loss that was replaced by giddiness when Bucky went to work on a similar tie on his left wrist. They held their wrists out to each other at nearly the same moment and Steve bent his head over Bucky’s wrist, fascinated by the identical mark that ran around the wrist the exact same way it did around his. He traced a sharp corner with his finger and Bucky shivered under his touch.

Bucky’s skin had a lingering tan from long summer days and the flesh was already hard with lean muscle. His wrist was mostly hard bone under rough skin, but warmth and the thrum of Bucky’s heart seeped into Steve’s fingers. Steve let out a long breath, then looked up into Bucky’s wide eyes.

They stared at each other for another few moments, before Bucky snapped out of their shared daze and grabbed Steve’s left wrist, his hand covering the mark, and tugging Steve along with him.

It sent a thrill through Steve, someone touching his mark—no, not someone, his soulmate. Touching someone’s mark, if you weren’t the soulmate, was as taboo as touching their privates. Even touching anywhere else wasn’t really a casual thing, especially skin on skin contact. There was always that breathless moment, when you met someone for the first time, when you reached out for a handshake (or to kiss a dame’s hand or something), that usually dissipated when nothing happened.

Steve noticed his surroundings mostly through force of habit, registering that they were climbing upstairs in an apartment building. Bucky brought them to a halt in front of a door; he could hear squealing and banging behind it from multiple young voices.

“I got two sisters and a baby brother,” Bucky explained. “My ma’s on leave cause of the baby, and my da....he’s been out every day trying to find some steady work.”

He opened the door without further ceremony, letting Steve see cramped, but clean rooms. An older girl and a younger one were giggling and waving dolls at each other on the floor by a bed, but looked up at the sound of the door and squealed, “Bucky!” before noticing Steve and going quiet, eyes round and curious.

“Becca, Ellie, this is Steve,” Bucky said, and kept going, pulling Steve through another doorway into a small kitchen where a woman was humming and chopping vegetables, while a baby snoozed in the sling on her back.

“Ma,” Bucky said, and the woman must have picked up something in his voice, because she turned immediately, looking concerned. Her eyes froze on Steve and she steadied herself on the counter.

“Is this who I think it is?” she said, her voice calm and her expression unreadable.

Steve felt a sudden surge of nerves that burst the joy and contentment of having found Bucky. He was no catch, he was well aware, not just because of his practically orphan and impoverished status, not even because of his tiny body. Steve’s long list of health problems made him a burden and pariah to everyone he’d met, to American values. Who wanted a kid who struggled with reading because he couldn’t see the blurry words, who had to ask people to speak up or suffer in incomprehension due to hearing that had been affected by childhood scarlet fever, who had a bent spine, heart troubles, asthma, and stomach ulcers, who use to eat raw liver like an animal because of pernicious anaemia, who had a diabetic mother with tuberculosis and, to add insult to injury, flat fucking feet?

Teasing from kids who’d known anything at all about his problems was superficial in comparison to the rejection he and his mother had gotten from their extended family. The icy look on Frances Agnes Rogers’ face when she told them to never bother her again was forever burned into his mind. No one wanted to take in and waste money on someone destined to be a life-long invalid, who might keel over dead in the next minute. Steve’s breath felt like it turned into sand in his lungs at the thought of rejection from his soulmate, at the thought of Bucky’s ma saying the truth, “You aren’t good enough for my son. Get out.”

His chest tightened _not now oh God please not here not in front of Bucky_ but when had God ever given a shit about him? The familiar feeling of suffocation spread through him and he knew he was probably wheezing loud enough to wake the dead, not that he could hear it over his heart staggering in a drunken rhythm in his ears. It felt like a steel band was squeezing his chest, and he _couldn’t breathe air air he needed air dying dying of course Steve fucking Rogers was gonna die the day he met his soulmate._

His fingers scrabbled at his pants pocket, fumbling the thin cigarette he drew out. He hadn’t a hope of lighting it, but a warm hand caught his, to take it away? Steve fuzzily thought. He tried to weakly pull away, but the hand was firm and steady, holding his hand and the cig by proxy still. A light came and lit the cig, and Steve greedily sucked the cig as soon as his hand was released.

Relief was always slow in coming and pain never really left Steve alone, but he could eventually breathe as normally as was possible for him. The primal satisfaction of managing to cling to life and spit death in the eye again (but he couldn’t spit forever, he knew it, he’d heard it whispered or shouted how if he twitched the wrong way and his luck ran out, he’d finally be put out his misery, stop being a waste of food, stop taking up space that could be given to someone more deserving) along with the dreamy, floating feeling that always accompanied the asthma cigs managed to make him forget about the situation for a minute, but eventually he looked up and blinked miserably at everything.

The two girls were peering in from the doorway and gawking at him like he was a carnival freak show; he looked away, unable to handle it, focusing on the fact that he was on the floor with his legs sprawled everywhere.

“Are you okay?” Bucky said hesitantly, and Steve made himself look at him, even though he felt guilt and the ever-present sense of unfairness churning in him.

“’m sorry,” Steve said hoarsely. “You deserve something better than a-a cripple.”

“You’re not a cripple,” Bucky said instantly, and even though it made everything hurt more, Steve snorted at the sheer inaccuracy of Bucky’s statement.

“I’ve got a list of problems that Jesus would need a dozen miracles to heal,” he said, and winced at being so irreverent in front of two young girls and Bucky’s ma.

“You’ve got my mark and I’ve got yours,” Bucky said. “Can’t get rid of me that easy, pal.”

Steve laughed a little before he saw the steady, determined look in Bucky’s eyes. He couldn’t hold that gaze; he didn’t deserve that kind of loyalty. Steve finally drew up the courage to look at Bucky’s ma; after all, her opinion had the greatest weight on their future. Denying a marked relationship was rare in this day and age, but it hadn’t always been. Marked people could and had survived without being with each other, so if Bucky’s ma didn’t want him hanging around.... Steve swallowed down the creeping tightness in his chest and feverishly concentrated on the flaking cig.

Bucky’s ma was standing over them—oh, Bucky was sitting in front of him on the floor, Steve distantly noted—her lips tight and brow furrowed. He met her eyes, they were the same blue-green of Bucky’s, and didn’t know what to do. Should he look pleading? Try to show her that Bucky was the best thing that had happened to him in twelve years, even though he’d known him for less than an hour? Would it even be right to try and convince her to let him stay near their family?

“Was that an...asthma...attack?” Bucky said.

Shame forced Steve’s head down and he choked out a yes.

“You have asthma.”

Bucky’s voice was flat. Terror seized Steve’s spine. This was it, Bucky’s ma didn’t even need to say anything, he had to go, go on alone forever without even the hope and promise of the mark.

He shifted to try and get up, but Bucky’s voice raised in anger made him freeze.

“You have asthma, and you were fighting in an alley when you could die if you look at something wrong—you’re not supposed to even play, let alone run around—you—you damn fool—”

Steve’s relief and knee-jerk reaction to being shouted at nearly drowned out Bucky’s ma’s “James Buchanan, watch your language in front of your sisters.”

“I ain’t gonna just sit and wait to die,” Steve hissed. “I can’t. I won’t. My ma didn’t raise me like that, my da wouldn’t have wanted his son to be dead but not have the decency to lie down in a coffin. I can’t play ball, can’t be in gym; people even say shock could kill me. I know I’m not supposed to fight, to run, to swim, to _move_ —”

Steve swallowed down on a curse much stronger than Bucky’s “damn.”

“My ma told me that my whole life, people are gonna look at me and tell me what I can’t do. She told me I’d have to fight to do everything,” Steve said roughly. “She’s right. I’m supposed to be dead fifty times over by now according to _them_ ; but I’ve been too stubborn to die so far and I’ll keep on keeping on until death drags me away fighting.”

Steve stared straight into Bucky’s eyes daring him to tell Steve that Bucky didn’t want a reckless fool for a soulmate, daring him to tell Steve to just lay down and die. After a beat, Bucky rolled his eyes and grabbed Steve’s left wrist, making his heart jump at the contact, covering their mark with a warm hand.

“You’re gonna keep me on my toes, aren’t you,” Bucky said in a resigned voice.

Steve searched his face to see if he regretted meeting Steve, but saw the same joy he felt shining underneath the put-upon air. Steve twisted the wrist in Bucky’s grasp so that he could grab their mark on Bucky’s wrist. He guiltily remembered Bucky’s ma after a jolt and looked up at her. Her face was very neutral.

“Go get washed up, the both of you,” she said. “Dinner should be ready in a bit.”

Bucky tugged Steve to his feet and over to a sink.

“So,” Bucky said casually while they were scrubbing. “You wouldn’t happen to have any other health problems I should know about, do you?”

Steve felt his face burn and wondered if he should tell Bucky; it was bad enough he had asthma (and a consumptive mother a voice hissed in the back of his head.)

“Because it was pretty scary watching you wheeze on the floor with no idea to what to do,” Bucky said, and his casual tone shook a little. “If there’s anything else...I need to know what to do.”

Steve’s shoulders hunched up.

“I can take care of myself,” he muttered.

“Yeah, maybe,” Bucky said. “But I can’t just sit and watch you die, so give me something to do.”

Steve glanced away, rubbing his hands dry on a towel. Bucky reached out and grabbed their mark again.

“I just found you,” he said quietly. “We’re both gonna live until we fall over our canes into a grave, ok?”

Steve had had some time to process finding his soulmate now, and while he still felt giddy, cold reality was starting to filter back into his life. Bucky hoped that they’d live until they were old and creaking—Steve didn’t want to break that illusion, not when they’d just met. He’d give him that dream for a little longer.

“I’ll tell you everything later,” Steve said. “Just, it’s a lot for the first day.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said.

They sat at an old wooden table that shifted alarmingly every time Bucky’s ma placed a dish on it. The two girls thumped up to the table only to meet Bucky’s stern eye.

“Did you wash up?”

“Nooo,” the smaller girl said, dragging out the word and twisting her fingers. The older one just sighed and led them off to the sink.

Steve tested the table very gently with his fingers.

“It keeps wobbling even though the legs are even,” Bucky said, scowling at the table. “At least it teaches the girls not to put their elbows on the table.”

“It’s probably the screws attaching the legs to the top,” Steve said. “Lemme see.”

He thumped down unceremoniously on the floor and squinted up at the corner underside. The sight was still a little fuzzy, but Steve could see a loose screw.

“Yeah, it is,” Steve said. “I can fix it.”

“After dinner,” Bucky’s ma said firmly.

Steve popped out from under the table and resettled himself, feeling a little embarrassed. Five steaming soup bowls were placed at every setting, with a loaf of bread and a dish of butter in the center of the table. Bucky’s ma took a seat at one end of the table and the girls sat across from Steve and Bucky.

“I’ll say grace, ma,” Bucky said.

They bowed their heads as Bucky spoke, thanking God for his grace and blessings, and for finding Steve.

“Amen,” was murmured around the table.

Spoons clinked against the bowls and the bread bowl was passed around the table. The younger girl fixed her eyes on Steve while she ate, and eventually he caught her gaze and stuck out his tongue. She, Ellie was her name Steve remembered, giggled immediately and they grinned at each other. It was nice to interact with a kid that didn’t know about his health problems; most of them were kept far away or ran away from him.

“Well,” Bucky’s ma said. “Will you ever get around to introducing me to your soulmate, Bucky?”

Bucky looked shocked and Steve felt mortified. He walked into someone else’s house and was eating their food without even having introduced himself.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Steve said, nearly dropping his spoon in his soup. “I can’t imagine how much of a hooligan I must seem—”

“I’ll take your name as an apology, young man,” she said.

“Steve Grant Rogers, ma’am,” Steve said, red-faced but head held high. “I apologize for the circumstances of our acquaintance.”

“Winnifred Catherine Barnes,” she said. “Where do you live, young man?”

“I, uh, live in the orphanage on eighth, ma’am,” Steve said, looking down at his lap.

“I’m very sorry about your parents,” Mrs. Barnes said. “Did you lose them recently?”

“Ma!” Bucky said, but he was sternly shushed.

Steve met Mrs. Barnes’ eyes, seeing that while they were the same color as Bucky’s there was none of his joy in them. He hesitated, because he already felt the strong aura of disapproval from her, and knew what he would say would probably tip her over the edge. He couldn’t even have one day with his soulmate before he was stirring up trouble, could he.

“My da died before I was born, when the 107th got gassed in the Great War,” Steve said. “My ma had to give me up when I was six because she was too sick to take care of me.”

Mrs. Barnes’ face went brittle and she half-rose from the table. Her daughters were silently chewing, their eyes darting between them. Bucky looked mostly confused with an edge of worry.

“Sick with what?” Mrs. Barnes said, but it was less of a question than a confirmation.

Steve took a deep breath and apologized silently to Bucky.

“Consumption, ma’am,” he said.

“Get out of my house,” she said, her calm voice all the more terrible for its rage. “Leave my boy alone.”

“Ma!” Bucky said, rising to his feet. “This is my soulmate!”

“Helen of Troy was Paris’ soulmate and she brought his family and city nothing but destruction and pain,” Mrs. Barnes said.

“I understand, ma’am,” Steve said softly, his chest squeezing tight. “Thank you for dinner.”

“If any of my family catches consumption because you exposed us, I’ll see you in hell,” she replied.

“If you throw Steve out, you throw me out too,” Bucky said, rising to his feet.

“This is your family, Bucky,” Steve said, just as Mrs. Barnes struck Bucky across the face.

“I did not raise my son to disobey his parents,” Mrs. Barnes said. “The Lord strike me down for raising such a selfish, sinful boy.”

Bucky looked down at his feet, but not before Steve saw the tears in his eyes. He could still see the angry red flush on Bucky’s ears and neck. Steve took a long look at him, the last time he’d get to look at his soulmate. Bucky was built sturdily with lean muscle and a straight frame outlined under his worn, but clean clothes. He’d been loyal, kind, loving and respectful to his family, and everything that Steve admired, wanted, and never knew he’d wanted.

“I can’t be sorry that I could meet you, even if I’m damned for it,” Steve said to Bucky. “But I can’t take you away from your family, and I can’t take them away from you.”

Steve didn’t know how to say all the thoughts in his head, about how he regretted how short of a time they had together, how he hoped Bucky would have a good life without a chronically ill soulmate to waste his time over, how he hoped he found some nice dame and gave his kids a father and a home. So Steve just raised a hand and left the apartment, stomping down the stairs at a pace that made him wheeze, hunching his shoulders against the cool evening air and feeling the ever-present ache in his back deepen into something more serious.

He walked down the streets, barely attending to his surroundings, hearing the rush of feet, rustle of clothing, murmurs and laughter from everyone passing by. The sky was almost complete dark and the streetlights hadn’t been lit yet so Steve had to squint and rely on muscle memory for the final few blocks to the orphanage.

It wasn’t the absolute worst orphanage; everyone had heard horror stories where kids were deprived of food, beaten on whims instead of punishment, and spent their days on menial labor instead of learning. Some rich man had built this orphanage, named the Astoria Orphanage of Manhattan, and meant it for those who weren’t likely to be adopted or placed in a foster home. So it was a mix between a residency and a school. He was actually lucky to be here; there was a library and a music room (and a playground and gym, not that he was allowed anywhere near them.) But it didn’t have his ma or any friends.

Steve tipped his head back to look up at the black sky dotted by yellow streetlights and breathed out a long sigh. Meeting Bucky today reminded him of the only other person who had loved him. A part of Steve burned at the thought of his ma, his loving, iron-willed, noble ma, wasting away in the sanatorium, surrounded by strangers as she hacked her lungs out bit by bit.

He inhaled harshly and swiped at his face before digging in his pocket and bringing out the strip of brown cloth. It took him a few tries to get it knotted; once it was securely over his soulmark, Steve shoved his hands into his pockets and entered the orphanage, his head down.

 

_August 1937—Auburndale Art School, Brooklyn_

Steve took a moment to grin up at the large brownstone building in appreciation. It took both his da’s army pension and his own year-long savings from working in the Brooklyn Community Art Center to pay for the tuition and living cost, but damn if it wasn’t worth it.

He owed a lot to Mrs. Williams who’d seen his struggles in class at the orphanage and had understood that it wasn’t that Steve was stupid. She’d spoken louder and clearer for him, wrote bigger on the chalkboards, and helped him after classes with tiny print that “could make an ant squint,” she’d say, laughing. She’d believed in him, vouched for his talent so he could attend George Washington High School, and encouraged him to go to college—him, a nobody, going to college.

He entered the building and followed the signs to the Registrar, barely keeping himself from bouncing in excitement. It wouldn’t do to trigger an asthma attack or jog his back on the first day of class. When he entered the office, the dame at the desk put a professional smile on her face as she looked up, a smile that took on a tinge of confusion as she looked at him.

Steve knew she didn’t see a nineteen year old man, but a scrawny boy lost in a college office. A lifetime of rejection and judgement had inured him to a lot, but sometimes a reminder would sting when he thought he couldn’t be hurt anymore. It was only a sting though _(and he knew his soulmate had looked at him and seen him without the outside trappings)_ and it barely dented Steve’s enthusiasm.

“Miss,” Steve said. “Steve Grant Rogers, here to register for the new semester.”

His voice was one of the few things about him that was normal and he clung to it like a lifeline whenever someone questioned his age and appearance. Steve straightened as best as he could to look the dame in the eye and convey the sincerity and maturity to convince her.

“Oh, yes, that’s right,” she said, looking flustered.

She broke eye-contact, looking embarrassed, and rustled through boxes of papers. Steve idly looked over the desk; loose-leaf papers were scattered over a schedule book, a framed photo was face down on the desk next to a shabby nameplate that said, “Ida Taylor,” and several filing cabinets by the wall looked ominously stuffed.

“Here are your papers, Mr. Rogers,” Miss Taylor said, shuffling them into a manila folder. She slapped one sheet on the desk in front of him and Steve almost jumped at the sharp sound. Miss Taylor didn’t notice; uncapping a fountain pen, she drew some circles and arrows on the paper.

“Here’s your first class, this is the main studio, and that’s the direction down to the men’s room,” she said, tapping the paper as she rapidly ran off the instructions.

Steve nodded politely enough to the blurred lines on the paper; he could figure it all out later in the hallway when he could hold the paper up to his face and squint.

“Thank you kindly, Miss Taylor,” he said.

“You’re very welcome,” she said, her smile looking a little more genuine this time. “Welcome to Auburndale; I look forward to seeing your work.”

Out in the hallway, Steve realized he was in trouble. Holding up the map and squinting cleared his eyes, but couldn’t clear the truly bewildering mess of the building schematic. He was pretty sure that it wasn’t architecturally possible to have a building plan like this. Steve internally groaned and analyzed the map as best he could, finally deciphering a path to one of the circled rooms. He’d go there and ask someone for directions to the next place if it wasn’t where he was supposed to go.

The path took him up several flights of rickety stairs that managed to dim Steve’s mood a little. His back was starting to throb and he had to stop every few steps because his chest tightened warningly, and once, halfway up, he had to clutch the railing because his heart went wonky for a second.

He reached the landing and gritted his teeth against the thought of doing that every day for however many years he would manage to stay enrolled. It’s worth it, he thought, even if that’s the stairway from hell.

He staggered off into the hallway leading from the landing and nearly fell over when a door abruptly opened and clipped his shoulder.

“Whoa, whoa, you alright?”

A hand seized his shoulder and steadied him, and Steve felt too grateful to be angry. He looked up into blue-green eyes and felt his heart stop. The man was tall, brown hair falling into his eyes, with a mouth curled into a half-smile. His hand was warm—almost burning into Steve’s shoulder, and even though it wasn’t skin-on-skin contact, even though it had been seven years, Steve would swear on his life that this was Bucky.

He looked up at Bucky, his mouth open, completely shocked. He’d resigned himself to never seeing Bucky again, and he had no idea what to say or do. Should he respect Mrs. Barnes’ wishes and keep his distance? Did Bucky still even want him? A hot flash of shame rushed through Steve, old wounds reborn as new, as he tried to think about how he looked to Bucky. Stuck at a shriveled height, with the bony limbs of a child, skin as pale as the dead.

And _Bucky._ He looked so alive, vitality running through him, with a strong jaw, leanly muscled, and a healthy flush in his cheeks. His brows drew down in a frown, and Steve was seized with another fear—what if Bucky didn’t recognize him? What if he’d forgotten about the asthmatic kid with a consumptive mother that he’d only known for two hours, while Steve had clung to Bucky’s memory for solace like a pathetic, pining idiot?

“Steve?”  
He whispered it with disbelieving hope, and Steve was overcome enough to grab Bucky’s left arm with all his strength and just hold on. Steve stomped ruthlessly down on the surging emotions in his belly before he humiliated himself by crying.

“Hey, Bucky,” Steve choked out, and Bucky grabbed him in a hug that was normally unthinkable in public. Steve hugged him back, now tactilely aware of just how much Bucky had physically changed.

“God in Heaven, I thought I’d never see you again,” Bucky said, his breath ruffling the top of Steve’s head. Habitual embarrassment tried to rear its head, but it was hard to believe Bucky was disgusted by how Steve looked when he was holding him in a tight embrace.

“Neither did I,” Steve said quietly, breathing in the smell of charcoal and newsprint off of Bucky. “What are you doing here?”

“Takin’ some basic drawing classes,” Bucky said, releasing Steve from the hug to run one hand through his hair. Bucky still kept a hold on Steve’s arm, and Steve could see the same joy in his face that had been present at their first meeting. Something settled inside of Steve.

“The WPA’s got me making architectural sculptures every few weeks,” Bucky said. “After a few months of carving out vines and togas on columns and friezes, I started gettin’ curious about the actual building design part. Got told to learn some perspective and proportion, so here I am. What are you doing here?”

“I’m an artist,” Steve said, fledgling pride unfurling in his chest. “I’m working for the WPA too, and I teach classes too at the Brooklyn Community Art Center.”

“So you’re a teacher here?” Bucky said with an impressed look.

“Nah, I’ve been wanting to learn more,” Steve said. “I’ve been saving up to come here.”

Bucky’s beaming smile dimmed a little.

“I-I haven’t been able to forgive myself,” he said. “For letting you go like that.”

“You had to take care of your family,” Steve said firmly.

“Yeah,” Bucky breathed. “But—”

“But nothing,” Steve said. “Excuse my rudeness, but I suspect your da wasn’t exactly around a lot for your ma and sisters.”

Bucky looked away at that, old pain and anger flashing across his face.

“And now they’re okay, cause they had you,” Steve said. “You did more than you should have had to.”

“I should have been there for you too,” Bucky said.

“Hey, look at me, pal,” Steve said. “I made it alright by myself. I can get by on my own.”

Bucky looked at him, a wry smile full of a whole mixture of undefinable emotions on his face.

“I guess you did,” he said softly.

Bucky moved his right arm, and Steve’s eyes tracked it to where it rested on Bucky’s left wrist, on top of where he knew their mark was.

“I haven’t any right to say this,” Bucky said. “But I’d like a second chance to be the soulmate you deserve.”

Steve’s jaw dropped. Getting accepted to Auburndale had already been a wish come true, but this was something that had only occurred to Steve in his most secret dreams during his lowest points.

“But—your ma—” Steve said faintly.

“I love my ma, but she’s got no right to keep me away from you,” Bucky said. “She’ll come to understand that.”

“The consumption—” Steve said, and could have kicked himself for reminding Bucky of that stigma.

“If an asthmatic didn’t get TB in seven years, it looks damn unlikely anyone else is getting it off of him,” Bucky said.

Bucky hesitated, then said as gently as possible,

“And I’m pretty sure they haven’t let you see your ma in the sanatorium at all.”

It was Steve’s turn to look away.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky said, his hand tightening on Steve’s arm.

“I don’t even remember her face anymore,” Steve said quietly.

He’d never told anyone that, not that there was anyone to listen. His life had been spent being overlooked for everything: love, friendship, enmity, jealousy. The only time he’d be noticed was when he fought to be noticed—like standing up to Jerry Davis who liked to trip Old Mrs. Turner at the orphanage. Sometimes he felt so isolated that the only way he seemed to be able to reach out and be heard was through lines and colors on a page.

And here he was, breaking every standard social etiquette by mentioning Bucky’s da, his ma’s consumption, _hugging_ Bucky...and feeling as if it was natural. Steve supposed all the stories about soulmates and the strong draw between then were founded on truth.

The empathy on Bucky’s face—the acceptance—was the tipping point on Steve’s iron self-control. Heat seared through his chest and tears leaked out from his eyes despite his efforts. Bucky drew him into another hug and Steve let himself lean into his soulmate.

 

_June 7, 1941-Cypress Hills Cemetery_

It was a hot summer day, middle of June, and Steve looked down at two stone headstones that marked the physical remains of his parents. The small bundle of purple asters on the fresh turned grave on the right looked inadequate.

After a few moments of feeling numb, Steve sank down to his knees, ignoring the twin twinges in his back and chest.

“Ma,” he said, his fingers curling in the crumbling dirt. “I wish I could have been there for you. I hope you’re happier now, with da and out of that place. I want you to know I’ve never stopped fighting, I try to be a decent fella, and I-I hope I make you proud.”

Sweat trickled down into his eyes and a hot wind blew his damp hair back.

“I think you’d have like my soulmate; his name’s Bucky. Maybe you would have scolded him for chasing girls all the time, but he treats them right; hell half the time they’re the ones chasing him. Sometimes I can feel a little bit of Bucky in my head; you always thought that was the coolest thing about soulmates, I remember.”

“I’m doing alright,” Steve said. “Got a steady job with the WPA; I even went to college for a year, _me._ My classes are pretty popular and they want me to do a mural at the New York Public Library.”

He turned a little to face the other gravestone.

“Da, Europe’s at war again. It’s looking pretty bad,” Steve shook his head. “The Great War should have been the end of it, but the world never runs out of bullies I guess. America’s stayin’ out of it, but if I get the chance, I hope I can do my part and make you proud.”

He went silent and let the distant sound of motor cars rattling over cobblestones and the honking and shouting of New York fill his ears. He looked back at the left gravestone, simply marked Sarah Rogers since no one was sure of her birth date.

“Does it damn me to be glad that you’re finally at peace?” he finally said. “For the longest while, I thought they just didn’t tell me when you passed. Seventeen years locked up in a sanatorium—!”

“I love you both,” Steve said, rising to his feet carefully, mindful of his back. “I wish I could have known you better.”

As he neared the gates, Steve saw a figure leaning against the wall outside. He squinted and made out Bucky’s familiar form.

“We looked for you after,” Bucky said, straightening and speaking at a clear volume. “Ma woulda given you a ride to the cemetery.”

“I know,” Steve said. “I kind of wanted to be alone.”

Bucky looked at him with those perceptive eyes, the bright sunlight shading them more blue than green for the moment.

“How was it?” he said.

“It’s ok. She’s next to dad.”

Steve had another flash of Bucky in his head, a warm, settling presence.

“I’m here for you,” was all Bucky said, looking up at the buildings around them, sticking his hands in his pockets. Steve’s eyes were drawn to his bared left wrist; even after four years, he still felt a little thrill every time he saw their mark, _his_ mark, shown proudly to the world.

“You don’t need to be,” Steve said. “I can get by on my own.”

Bucky swung abruptly to face Steve, a fierce look in his eyes.

“The thing is, you don’t have to. I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, pal. Until we fall over our canes into our graves, remember?”  
“Bucky—”

“I’ve never said it, but it pisses me off to see how you’re treated,” Bucky said. “You’re worth ten of some people who had the luck to be born with everything working as they ought, and they look down their noses at you cause all they see is your body. And cause you can be real thick sometimes, you believe it.”

“What? Buck, no—”

“You are amazing, Steve,” Bucky said, his cheeks flushing at saying such an intimate thing out loud, and Steve’s cheeks flush right along with them. “You’re an upright, decent fellow who can’t let a single damn injustice pass by without kicking up enough of a fuss to raise the dead. You create these paintings and drawings outta your head like its nothing, and you’re the best teacher at the Center—don’t even try to deny it.”

Bucky grabbed their mark on Steve’s wrist, and he’d never stop relishing that contact.

“’til the end of the line,” Bucky said, and Steve saw the serious, determined look on his face. “You deserve it.”

“Okay,” Steve said, when he felt he could speak normally. “The end of the line. Got it.”

They continued walking back to their apartment building, and Bucky had to drop Steve’s arm before they got funny looks on the street. The serious atmosphere around them dissipated with the noisy sounds of the city, and Bucky turned to Steve with a smirk.

“Besides, someone’s gotta have your back to pull your ass outta the fire.”

 

_December 7, 1941-Brooklyn Community Art Center_

Bucky lounged idly next to Steve’s desk, sketching a blueprint on his pad with a distracted air that had dames’ eyes drifting more to him than the still life setting in front of them. Steve debated telling them to focus, then decided he’d reserve his criticism at the end when their drawings would be sloppy. It was slightly petty, but it would mean Miss Emily Burns would have the nicest drawing, as she was properly concentrated, and Miss Susan Miller and Miss Polly Jones would stop flouncing around and sneering at her for some mysterious, female reason.

Steve finished his tour checking his students’ progress and settled back down at his desk. Bucky glanced over at him and slid over a mug with a stern look. Steve suppressed an eye roll; Bucky always got fussy during winter-time about Steve’s lungs. A bad asthma attack two winters ago had completely shaken Bucky, and led to him spending money like water on scarves, gloves, jackets, bedding, and various teas.

A sniff over the steaming mug told him it was peppermint tea and Steve gave Bucky a betrayed look. He hated its minty taste and its bizarre duality of hot and coolness. Bucky replied with an adamant expression and a nudge in his head and Steve rued the day that he had thought he’d felt some relief in his lungs after drinking some. Bucky, the little shit, had managed to overhear that from Steve’s _brain_ and try as he might Steve couldn’t find a way to return the favor.

Steve suppressed a sigh and took a reluctant, tiny sip and Bucky’s pencil resumed its scratching. He shuffled through some of the papers on his desk and wrote down some reminders on a scrap sheet of paper: _rent, turpentine, Becca’s shoes, exhibition piece due Tuesday, bread_ —

Someone slammed their door open and Steve’s head shot up with a heavy scowl as his students jumped and jerked their hands across their work. The man—an artist Steve vaguely recognized—panted in the doorway, bent over for a second, and Steve’s irritation morphed into concern.

“Hey, bud, you alright?” he said, going over to him, Bucky hot on his heels.

“T-the Japs,” he gasped out, and something dropped in Steve’s stomach. “Those murdering Japs bombed Pearl Harbor!”

_“What?”_

Gasps broke out from all around, everyone had gathered close to hear what was going on, and Steve dimly noted that Miss Susan Miller had swooned dead away. A horrible feeling was welling up in Steve’s stomach because his body was reacting to something his mind was slow to process.

“The men,” Steve said thickly. “Our men. Are they alright? How many injured?”

His father had been infantry, even if Steve had never known him, even if Pearl Harbor was a naval base; some part of Steve was boiling in rage at the thought of his dead and wounded, from the-the dishonorable, dirty way that Japs had attacked his country.

“Don’t have a casualty list yet,” the man said, finally catching his breath, looking somber. “I hear all our ships are sunk. Dirty, slant-eye yellows attacking without declaring war like decent, civilized folk—”

“Those non-interventionists had their heads stuck so far up their asses—”

“Hey!” Steve said. “There are ladies present.”

He stared his student, John Fields, down and the man nodded at him after a moment, touching his brow in apology to the ladies.

“Do you think there’ll be war?” Miss Polly Jones quavered, clasping her hands together and stepping next to Bucky.

Steve had to bite back several possible remarks that might have been strongly motivated by her personality and proximity to his soulmate. Surely Bucky had more taste and sense than to fall for that?

“There’s been a war going on for a few years now,” Miss Emily Burns said with calm solemnity.

Steve immediately decided to put her works in the most prominent display at the student exhibition—not that she needed favoritism for it. People fell into heated discussions on the vengeance the Japs had coming to them, how America would have to go in and rescue Europe from ol’ Hitler, what war would mean for their country still shaking off the last of the Depression. He turned his head to see Bucky’s unguarded expression of—something and said,  
“You okay?”

“I’m alright,” Bucky said, but there was something off about his tone.

Steve would have pressed him further, but his students’ voices were getting loud and despite the presence of ladies, the men were slipping into more and more vulgarities.

“I don’t think we’ll be getting anything more done today,” he said as loud as he could over everyone. They turned to look at him. “This might be the last class we have, so I’d like to thank all of you ladies and gentlemen for a wonderful few weeks, and wish us and our country the best for whatever lies in the future.”

His students murmured their agreement and started clapping; Steve ducked his head and fought down a blush. Everyone moved to clear up their supplies; in Steve’s case, he started to clear out his desk.

“What are you doing?” Bucky said softly.

“It’s gonna be war, Buck, no way around it, not even for the doves in the government,” Steve said, shuffling his papers together in a neat stack. “I mean to enlist, so I have to clear out my classroom—they might even shut down the WPA for the war effort in any case.”

“Enlist?” Bucky said, and at that Steve spun around and pinned him with a look daring him to say anything, _anything_ hinting he couldn’t.

“Yeah,” Steve said, his eyes fixed on Bucky’s. “Thinking of the army, like my da. Maybe I’ll even get into the same regiment.”

Bucky blew out his breath in a sigh, scrubbing his hand through his hair.

“Steve—”

“Mr. Rogers.”

Steve turned to see Miss Emily Burns hovering nervously in front of his desk. He put on a smile without too much effort—she was a nice dame.

“How can I help you, Miss Burns?” he said.

“I’d like to thank you,” she said in her quiet, clear voice. “You’ve been a wonderful teacher. I’d admired your art work before ever knowing you taught classes and I’m glad to have been able to take one. You’re a good man, Mr. Rogers.”

She gave him a small curtsy that had Steve scrambling to his feet and bowing back in shock.

“Well,” Steve got out. “I think you’re swell—I mean! It’s been an absolute joy having you in my class and I hope you keep on with art, ma’am.”

She smiled at him, hitched her bag over her shoulder, and left the room with little neat steps.

“Huh,” Bucky said.

Steve stood staring at his desk in blank shock for a few moments, before shaking his head and recalling himself to clearing it out. He’d have to come around again to get the canvases and newsprint pads that were too large to fit into his bag, and he’d have to track down someone to tell them he was resigning and give over his key. His hands paused by the mug of tea, no longer steaming, and he wondered if Bucky would make him choke down the nasty cold liquid.

“I’ll make you another cup at home,” Bucky said, narrowing his eyes at him.

Steve sighed, but poured out the tea into the paint-spattered bucket in the corner of the room. He took a last look around the room that had been more or less his for three years; he remembered working with paint-spattered hands wheezing from the smell of the paints and turpentine but too caught up creating to care, seeing students grin as he helped them pour out their thoughts and desires onto paper or canvas. And now, it was time to close the chapter on this part of his life; there was a war going on out there. He pulled on his coat and scarf.

“Steve.”

He turned to see another undecipherable look in Bucky’s eyes. Steve felt a flash of frustration; this was his soulmate, this was Bucky, they knew each other so well sometimes it scared Steve, he didn’t like not being able to figure out what was going on in his head. The sense of Bucky in his head increased, he felt _anger-fear-exhaustion-worry-but always always love, so much loyalty/affection/wonder bound up twisted together_ and blinked.

Bucky reached out and brushed his fingers over their mark on Steve’s wrist, curled his fingers tight around the slender bone. Steve was long past caring about how much Bucky’s hand dwarfed him; he luxuriated in the heat spreading through him.

“Before we run off to enlist, how about we practice some boxing first? Y’know, train up a little and get back in shape.”

Steve bit his lip to hide a pained smile. He doubted Bucky, a three-time boxing champ, had ever gotten out of shape but he appreciated the sop to his pride.

“That sounds swell,” he said.

A relieved smile passed over Bucky’s face, and he grabbed a bag and tucked a newsprint pad under his arm.

“As swell as that dame, huh?”

“Bucky!”

Their laughter echoed down the hall despite Steve’s best efforts to keep the volume down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I blame ao3 for having all of these amazing fics that pulled me into writing one myself. I mean, I've got 19 credits of college, a desperate imperative to find a job after said college, a 90,000 word original novel I should work on, but this fic is burning under my skin. And of course I get seized by inspiration when Civil War is gonna mess everything up in less than two months. 
> 
> The soulmate/mark/bond effects/info will come out throughout the course of the story. :)
> 
> Next up, the events of CA:tFA in my fic-universe! 
> 
> Research links for anyone interested! (Not that the research was comprehensive, but sometimes I couldn't stop myself from doing it.)  
> Two [different](https://www.reddit.com/r/mcudp/comments/2n71sq/mcu_master_spreadsheet_wasted_a_couple_hours/) MCU [timelines](http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/5395/A-Marvel-Cinematic-Universe-Timeline) to keep everything on track (btw, screw you Marvel, Dec. 7, 1941 was a Sunday, why would Steve and Bucky be in a class on Sunday???)  
> [Some](https://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/timeline.asp) [midwifery](http://www.childbirthconnection.org/article.asp?ck=10076) [things](http://www.supportedbirth.com/articles/twilight-sleep-childbirth-history)  
> A [list](https://historicallyaccuratesteve.tumblr.com/post/90483251181/chronically-ill-steve-rogers) of Steve's [health](https://cap-chronism.dreamwidth.org/6115.html) problems with a [special](http://hardluckasthma.blogspot.com/2012/01/history-of-back-door-bronchodilators.html) [look](http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/asthma/asthma-history.php) at [asthma](http://hardluckasthma.blogspot.com/2012/01/history-of-asthma-rescue-medicine_07.html)  
> [Orphanages](http://pages.jh.edu/jhumag/496web/orphange.html)! [Yay!](http://www.faqs.org/childhood/Me-Pa/Orphanages.html) This [guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Astor#Philanthropy) probably didn't fund an orphanage, but he was a good enough fit.  
> [Steve's](http://www.britannica.com/topic/WPA-Federal-Art-Project) [job!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Art_Project)  
> Bonus info on [education](http://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf) statistics (page 64 for fic-relevant info)  
> Bonus info on Steve's parents' [cemetery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_Hills_Cemetery_\(New_York_City\)) which I randomly picked  
> Bonus info on [apartments!](https://historicallyaccuratesteve.tumblr.com/post/109231371791/i-should-be-working-but-instead-i-am-thinking)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings: in this chapter, a lot of strong language.
> 
> In which the author spent the entire time writing this chapter cursing Marvel for rampant abuse of history and cursing herself for being unable to write without fact-checking everything.

_February 9, 1943-Brooklyn, NYC_

The only thing that surprised Bucky about the letter in his mailbox was that it came in 1943 instead of earlier.  He blew out a long breath staring at the small rectangle in his hand, staring at the stamps of “SELECTIVE SERVICE HEADQUARTERS” and “OFFICAL BUSINESS.”  The rest was just a formality, ripping open the envelope to see the “ORDER TO REPORT FOR INDUCTION” and that the President of the United States wanted James Buchanan Barnes to drag his sorry ass to an induction station at 7:15 a.m. on the 22nd of February.

He took the letter upstairs in a daze and sat at the kitchen table, numbly wondering how he was going to break it to Steve, who still hadn’t given up on enlisting and was terrifying Bucky with outlandish lies on his registration forms.  Steve came in some time later, stamping snow off his shoes and hanging up his hat, complaining about the new shoe ration and wrinkling his nose at the mug of peppermint tea at the table that Bucky did not recall making.  But then he looked up and seen something on Bucky’s face ( _or felt it in his head)_ because Steve turned solemn in an instant and asked him what was wrong.

Bucky did his best to plaster a smile on his face, said, “Well, it looks like my number’s up,” in a carelessly cheerful way, because he didn’t know how to react.  This was everything Steve wanted, because he was a crazy man with delusions about duty and service; Bucky was a simple man who needed to look out for his ma, his siblings, and his soulmate, and dying in the mud of a foreign country across an ocean and leaving his loved ones in the cold figured prominently in his nightmares.

Steve dropped into a chair with an abruptness that had Bucky next to him checking his chest to listen to his heart and lungs.  Steve pushed him away _tinge of annoyance wrapped around fear intermingled with jealousy_ and Bucky just sat on the floor because his normally iron control over himself had rusted away.  He was leaving to go learn how to kill people, leaving his ma and sisters with twelve-year old Matthew as the man of the house, leaving Steve in the middle of winter, _winter_ , where he half-died every second in the freezing air even with Bucky there to wrap him in three scarves and force peppermint tea down his throat.

Bucky Barnes did not think of himself as much of a philosophical man.  But if his thoughts did turn in that direction after a few beers, he’d think about how his God-given purpose in life seemed to be to protect and nurture.  He was there to shore up his ma when her lips went tight at the lack of funds for food and rent (or when she wept in despair from the exploitative actions of his father.)  Bucky would dig out his old knowledge of the classics for his sisters or glare off boys who thought they could get fresh with the Barnes girls.  He taught Matthew which comments a man ignored and which ones he could not, how to treat a lady right, how to be a decent man.

And Steve.  Bucky didn’t understand how the world turned blind when it looked at him, because Steve was amazing.  If Bucky got well and truly sauced, he’d think that Steve burned with so much inner passion it lit him up inside.  When Steve thought something deserved it, he’d throw himself into it fully, nothing held back, with the sort of reckless abandon that was unthinkable for Bucky who guarded everything with ferocity.

Bucky might nurture, but Steve created.  From little charcoal sketches on scraps of paper, to full-blown murals at the New York Public Library, Steve blazed with his talent, his gift that he’d fought so hard to cultivate, working around his vision problems, his aching back, his weak heart.  He had a sort of view of the world around him, seeing it as how it _should_ be even if it wasn’t, and the stubborn idea in his head that he’d make it that way, one brawl in an alleyway at a time.

Bucky protected so that others could flourish.  But he knew, sobbing on the apartment floor with Steve’s arms around him _comfort-concern-love in his head_ , that he didn’t want to die, couldn’t die, and he was going to have to kill so that he didn’t.

 

_February-May 1943, Camp McCoy, Wisconsin_

Drafted recruits were put on express trains to go to their training camps and it should have been an exciting experience to go over 100 mph in a luxury train through several states despite the fact that it was for a war.  But Bucky couldn’t shake the thought that Steve would have loved seeing the landscape speed by through the enormous glass windows, eating in the fancy dining car, touching the plush seats and fancy upholstery.

He did his best to shake thoughts like that out of his head, because Bucky refused to regret the one good thing Steve’s bad health had brought him: an escape from war, killing, and its ignoble attributes that would do nothing but darken Steve’s perspective on the world.  Steve had sworn to look after Bucky’s family as well; Bucky had half-wondered if he’d managed to mimic the mind-reading soulmate trick Bucky had only been able to pull off once, but no, Steve just knew him that well after six years.

Bucky ran his fingers over the band of the wristwatch covering their soulmark on his wrist, thinking of the geometric shapes and sweeping lines that reminded him of art deco and futurism.  He wondered what being over a thousand miles away from Steve would do to their mental bond.  It had developed over the years to the point where they both always had a slight awareness of the other and if they concentrated they could pick up on some emotions.

(And once, when Steve had come the closest he’d ever had to dying, when Bucky felt the same helpless terror he had at thirteen staring down at his suffocating soulmate, Bucky had been so desperate, so driven, he’d caught more than just an emotion.)

It wasn’t a replacement or a superior means of communication, as evidenced by the time Steve had been pissed off thinking about some random asshole but Bucky had thought the flash of emotion had been meant for him.  It just was an expansion of what they had and worked for, a cherished expansion.

Even as more and more recruits came on at every stop and eventually Bucky found himself being friendly with a group of excitedly nervous men from various states, he couldn’t stop periodically poking at the little bit of Steve in his head just to make sure it wasn’t going to disappear on him in the next mile.

After settling in at Camp McCoy, if settling was getting his head shorn, getting issued a thick stack of uniforms from the quartermaster, and getting assigned to a barracks full of strangers, Bucky gave a last poke to the Steve presence in his head and breathed a silent sigh of relief.  He curled up on his army bed and gave himself up to sleep.

 

For all that Bucky had spent the last year dreading his inevitable military conscription, army life was surprisingly soothing—a sentiment Bucky kept to himself because he knew his peers would vehemently disagree.  The rigid discipline and loss of choices were annoying at worst; at best it was nice not to be the rock that supported the world, to lose himself in a strict schedule and into a faceless mass of fellow recruits, to get into the best shape of his life from the constant drills and training.

It wasn’t paradise by any means; the wooden two-story barracks were heated by a coal furnace that did nothing but taunt them in the below-freezing nights and mornings.  Rolling around in snow and mud, quick-marching over miles and miles with a howling drill sergeant for company, and digging or trying to in the frozen ground were no one’s ideas of fun.  The day they started practicing bayoneting on dummies made Bucky’s stomach roil at the thought of doing that to another man, but he kept any queasiness off his face because their trainers seemed to have a sixth sense for anything they could single a recruit out for.

Bucky had never had any trouble doing things well, whether that was schoolwork or athletics, and it looked like military basic training was no exception.  When he forgot, for brief moments here and there, the reason he was racing through obstacle courses the rifle in his hand a part of him, flipping an opponent to the ground in hand-to-hand combat, or firing into a target with a degree of accuracy that made the even the trainers look impressed, he’d feel a thrill coursing through him.

He’d even been promoted for his marksman skills and his ease with other soldiers to corporal with heavy hints at sergeant in the future.  The extra pay to send to his ma was nice.

But he always remembered that this would end up with him in Europe or Asia, shooting at a human instead of a target, and reality resettled.  It didn’t help that, in the very limited bits of free time Bucky had, he’d wandered around the camp and discovered the POW camps and the Army nurse training centers.

Seeing the enemy smoking and chatting in German and Japanese behind barbed wire sent chills up Bucky’s spine.  They looked like normal men, bearded, unbearded, scowling, smiling, slapping each other’s backs.  Bucky swallowed hard.  He stared especially hard at the Japs, but they didn’t look much like how the propaganda posters depicted them; they weren’t noticeably yellow and their eyes didn’t seem that slanted.  He wasn’t close enough to see their teeth, but seeing what all the posters had already changed, he suddenly doubted they had enormous buckteeth.

He’d left before anyone saw him, but the image of regular men stuck with him throughout training the next week.  One of the men in his barracks fell ill, and vividly reminded of Steve the way the man was wheezing, Bucky found himself volunteering to help him to the hospital.

At the bed-station hospital, he found a bustling training center for Army nurses.  At that point, it had been more than a month since he’d seen a woman and Bucky realized this fact...distinctly.

“Miss,” he said, nodding politely at a passing dame in an olive-drab skirt and jacket, a garrison cap with a gold and black cord-edge braid set on her neat brown hair.

She stopped and faced Bucky with an icy look on her face.  He had a moment to reflect that apparently he’d lost all of his skills with women before she laid into him.

“I see you are a corporal,” she said frostily.  “And clearly quite new.  As green as you are, that is no excuse to disrespect a superior officer.”

Bucky looked her over, noting the gold pins on her lapels, then stopping at the small gold bar on each shoulder loop.  His mouth dropped open before he got a hold of himself, snapped to attention, and saluted.

The second lieutenant (how the hell was a woman a second lieutenant?) looked him over with satisfaction and returned the salute before saying,

“At least you’re quick on the uptake.  As you were.”

Bucky dropped out of attention, but kept his back straight.

“Excuse my ignorance, ma’am,” he said.  “But....”

He wasn’t sure how to ask without offending her further; he certainly didn’t want to end up cleaning the johns or kitchen duty as punishment.  She took pity on him.

“Camp McCoy is also the largest site for Army nurse training,” she said.  “Most nurses hold the rank of second lieutenant, but further promotion is possible.”

“I’m very sorry for disrespecting you, ma’am,” Bucky said.

He couldn’t wait to write Becca about this and wondered how much more information he could get out of the lieutenant.

“That’s alright, corporal, as you were merely ignorant instead of malicious,” she said coolly and Bucky _really_ had to write Becca about this.  “Dismissed.”

Bucky hesitated for a moment and her eyebrows shot up.

“I’ve got a sister,” he blurted out, almost shifting from foot to foot like a little boy.  “She’s brilliant and brave and she idolizes Wonder Woman.  She’d love to hear about women serving the country—that is, I understand that you have responsibilities that don’t include babysitting a green corporal—”

The lieutenant’s face didn’t soften exactly, but she nodded her head once.

“I can spare a minute,” she said.  “The training basic course is four weeks long and covers military courtesy, discipline, correspondence, security, self-protection, physical fitness, drill, sanitation, insect control, and care of chemical casualties in addition to nursing.  Nurses are deployed in Theaters of Operations all over the world and we serve under fire, corporal, in every sort of hospital, be it field, train, or ships.

“Much like soldiers, I have seen nurses taken prisoner, die, escape,” she shrugged, and Bucky was controlling his expression with difficulty.  He was rethinking writing Becca about this; she did not need any ideas that would put her near war and death.

“I myself served in Bizerte, Tunisia before receiving orders to train nurses and visit family here in Wisconsin.  I expect I shall be back out there in another few months,” she said.  “Make no mistake; it is nasty work over there and you should shake any thoughts of glory out of your head.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bucky said, feeling ill again at the thought of his approaching future abroad.

Perhaps the nurse sensed it, because she peered up at him with a frown.

“I don’t say that to be cruel.  Soldiers without delusions of grandeur covering their eyes tend to survive better.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Bucky said hoarsely.

She regarded him again.

“Lieutenant Ellen Ainsworth,” she abruptly said.

“Corporal James Barnes, ma’am,” Bucky said.  “I truly appreciate your time and correction.”

“It’s good to see a man who cares for his family, corporal,” she said.  “Your sister is very lucky.  Dismissed.”

Bucky walked out of that hospital shaking.  Every day brought him closer to the one where he’d board a ship and cross an ocean.  If even nurses weren’t safe....  Bucky closed his eyes and reached for the presence of Steve in his head to steady him.  He felt _contemplation-excitement-consideration-irritation-delight_ and knew Steve was in the middle of painting or drawing something.  He looked up at the gray sky overhead, holding off on snow for the moment, and hoped everyone back at home was keeping warm.

 

_June 14, 1943-Stark Expo, Queens_

Of course Steve had found a way to get himself into a brawl the last day Bucky had before being shipped out.  He was still fuming over it hours later, even with an arm draped around Connie’s shoulders and the brilliant lights of the Stark Expo flashing around them.  Even as he tried to focus on the pretty dames in Stark’s show and Connie’s warmth flush against him, his mind kept straying back to that alleyway—and the fact that Steve hadn’t given up on trying to enlist.  Seriously.  _New Jersey_.  Ugh.

Stark came out and claimed he’d invented a flying car; now this, Bucky had to see.  His eyebrows nearly flew off his damn head when it actually levitated for a few seconds, but then reality reasserted itself when it crashed back to the stage.  Bucky grinned and glanced back at Steve to see what he thought.  His soulmate looked more glum than anything else, and Bonnie wasn’t giving him the time of day.

Stark finished excusing himself and the show was starting to lose its ability to keep Bucky’s mind off of tomorrow, so it was clearly time to move on to something more interesting.  He turned again to chivvy Steve into going dancing with them, only to find him missing.  What he did see was another enlistment poster.  Bucky’s eyes narrowed and he prodded the Steve in his head more for confirmation than anything.  _Determination-inadequacy-duty_ —Bucky sighed and excused himself for a moment to the girls and followed the signs to the nearby recruitment center.

Steve was standing on one of those stupid fair attractions and Bucky’s chest squeezed to see that the top of Steve’s head was barely visible in the soldier’s image.  Sometimes he wanted to just shake the stubborn ass; why couldn’t he just let it go?

Bucky tried to give Steve a way to brush it off, but the sense in his head and the look on Steve’s face told him Steve was dead serious.  Again.

“You really gonna do this again?” Bucky said flatly.  It was his last damn day in America and he wanted to forget about the fucking army but Steve never let anything go once he got his teeth into it.

“Well it’s a fair, I mean to try my luck,” Steve said with that easy-going manner of his he used to cover obstinacy bigger than the Atlantic.

Bucky hadn’t been sure if he really wanted to pick a fight on his last night with Steve, but dammit he cared too much to just let it go.

“As who?  Steve from Ohio?  They’ll catch you, worse they’ll actually take you,” Bucky said.

“Look, I know you don’t think I can do this, but—”

The _idiot_.  It wasn’t even about whether Steve could go off and shoot or stab people.  Bucky felt like screaming.

“This isn’t a back alley, Steve,” he snapped.  “It’s war.”

“I know it’s a war—” Steve mumbled, still in that fucking agreeable tone that meant he wasn’t agreeing with anything.

“Why you so keen to fight, there’s so many important jobs—”

“What do you want me to do, collect scrap metal—”

“Yes!” Bucky said vehemently, not caring that his voice was rising.

“—in a little red wagon—“

“Why not?”

“I’m not gonna sit in a factory, Buck,” Steve said, and finally, Bucky was finally getting to him, even if he wasn’t getting through that damn thick head of his.

“I don’t—”

“Bucky.  _Bucky_ ,” Steve said, and it was that damn inner light again, that fucking resolution of how the world should be.  “There are men laying down their lives.  I got no right to do any less than them.  That’s what you don’t understand.  This isn’t about me.”

And what about me, Bucky wanted to say.  If the army lost its mind and enlisted you and you died from pneumonia during winter training, or if your heart gave out from digging foxholes in bedrock, or if your platoon abandoned you on the field cause you’ve got shit endurance, what the hell am I supposed to do?

Steve would just look at him and say it wasn’t about him either, Bucky supposed.

“Right,” Bucky said lowly, trying to keep his voice from shaking.  “Cause you got nothin’ to prove.”

He locked eyes with Steve, daring him to lie to Bucky’s face, and Steve exhaled, setting his jaw, but saying nothing.  Bucky glared down at him, half-trying to memorize the sight of him, straight brows over an enormous nose that looked out of place on his thin face, a face that struggled to sprout scruff to Steve’s eternal irritation.  Bucky was seized again by the urge to just tell Steve that he was afraid, so afraid.

“Hey, Barnes!  We going dancing?”

The shout managed to be flirtatious, and Bucky identified it as Connie’s voice.  He turned, still trying to shake of his lingering irritation, and spread his arms.

“Yes we are,” he said jauntily, before turning back to Steve, who seemed to have remembered that it was his last night.  Steve still looked stubborn, but also a little regretful.  Bucky couldn’t change him, and he loved Steve’s steadfast nature—except for this obsession with the army.

So he shook his head and said,

“Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.”

“How can I,” Steve said.  “Takin’ all the stupid with you.”

Bucky looked at him again, then strode forward and seized him in a hug.

“You’re a punk,” he said, his damn voice shaking again.

“Jerk,” Steve muttered over his shoulder.  “Be careful.”

The concern in his voice and eyes relieved Bucky, because at last here was proof that Steve didn’t see war as some glorious undertaking, that he knew it was dangerous.  At last Steve looked at Bucky in his uniform and saw him instead of duty and war.  Bucky walked away slowly, for once not in any hurry to keep dames from waiting.

“Don’t win the war ‘til I get there,” Steve called.

Bucky spun around and gave him a salute before heading on to Connie and Bonnie, a smile slapped on.

“Come on girls,” he said, and dragged Connie under his arm.

They walked off to the dance hall, the girls giggling and flirtatiously touching his arms, his chest, loudly admiring the uniform. 

           

_Letter, postmarked August 12, 1943_

 

_Don’t know how much of this’ll get through the censors, but we left North Africa and invaded Italy, Sicily to be exact.  We got Mussolini deposed, people are saying we’ll get all of Sicily soon.  Hope you’re all doing alright—you never did tell me if you were receiving the pay I’ve been sending.  If you got it, someone make sure to buy ma some new glasses for knitting._

_I’m ok—I do miss ma’s cooking.  What’s this I hear about some boy sniffing around you, Ellie?  If he does you wrong, I’ll swim across the Atlantic if I have to and make him regret it.  Tell him that, Becca. ~~What’s wrong with him that he’s not drafted~~_

_Ellie, if I’m not mistaken, you’ll be going into your final year of college soon; now I’ve got a deadline to win the war so I can be home for your graduation.  Becca, I almost fell on my face when I read that I’ll be an uncle in a few months.  My squad got a good laugh out of that at my expense.  Matthew, don’t forget to look out for your ma and sisters, don’t make them worry by staying out kicking cans in the alley.  Study hard at school, ask Ellie if you got any trouble, don’t forget to wrap your hand well before boxing—it’s important._

_I haven’t gotten any letters from Steve, and all of my letters to him have been returned. ~~I’m worried~~   Check on him, will you, Becca?_

_All my love,_

_Bucky_

_P.S.  What’s all this about a “Captain America”?  We_

_all think he’s a fat-head, if he really exists.  All sorts of_

_propaganda these days._

 

_October 1943, Azzano, Italy_

“Why are we in Azzano?” Dum Dum muttered from the back of the line as they squeezed through a narrow valley between two rocky outcroppings topped by pine forests.  It made Bucky nervous, but it was short enough and he didn’t get a choice anyway.

“Quiet back there!” the staff sergeant barked.

Dum Dum tugged on his mustache with a scowl, sending a side-long glance at Bucky, who kept his eyes forward as they slogged through the mud.  It was a really valid question, considering the rest of the Allied force was consolidating their position in southern Italy, but they couldn’t really ask anyone who’d know.  Usually the rumor mill would give them some kind of clue, but even that had run dry a long time ago, aside from the one persistent rumor of some kind of secret mission.

Bucky was pretty good at scrounging up whatever his fireteam needed—whether that was smokes, booze, or news, but he’d been told off pretty hard for trying this time around.  Which lent further credence to the whole “secret mission” thing.  Bucky let out his breath in a near silent sigh.

“Sarge, you know anything?” Dum Dum said very quietly.

“As much as you,” he replied.

“Damn,” Dum Dum said, then frowned.  “Did you hear that?”

Bucky turned some of his attention away from moving his legs forward one at a time and tried to focus on his hearing.  He heard the slop and squelches from movement in mud, quiet cursing from soldiers, rustling from branches.

“What did you hear, corporal?” Bucky said.

“No birds,” Dum Dum grunted, his eyes darting around.

Birds?  How the hell did anyone notice when birds were cheeping or chirping or whatever birds did?

“I said, quiet back there!” Staff Sergeant John Miller strode toward them.  “Sergeant, keep your men in—”

A series of cracks sent Bucky to the ground by pure instinct honed by months on the front line.  Loud shouting and more gunfire erupted around them and bullets whizzed down onto them from the left rocky outcropping.  Bucky scrambled over to put his back against that side, cursing under his breath at whoever had the bright idea to bring them deep into enemy territory and walk them through a perfect ambush point.  It was getting hard to keep a straight head under the adrenaline rush and all the noise from weaponry and screams from the wounded.

Bucky’d been near the end of the line, so the entrance of the narrow valley would be closer than trying for the exit, like some men were doing and getting strafed down for their troubles, and better than trying to climb up the rocks.  He wrapped a bit of cloth over his mouth to help with all the gunpowder smoke and dust from the small bits of rock coming down with the bullets.

Before he moved, Bucky looked around to see if there were any lightly wounded he could drag with him; most of the soldiers he could see were unmoving on the ground.  A few were bloodied and staring senselessly around.  He cursed again and stripped as much weaponry he could carry off of the dead, then slid toward the entrance, keeping his movements smooth so he didn’t alert the enemy to his location with sudden motion.  The only good thing about the sheer amount of firepower coming down on them meant that visibility was ruined for both sides, which meant they were no longer just fish in a barrel.

He could hear harsh German commands being issued overhead and the barrage ceased for a moment and Bucky grimaced at the cries from wounded Americans in the valley becoming clearer.  He reached the entrance, where there were sloping hills up toward the higher ground currently occupied by Nazi forces.

“Sergeant, here,” he heard, and followed the voice up to a copse of trees and bushes.

Dum Dum was assembling his submachine gun frantically, blood covering half his face.  There were fifteen other soldiers, with one keeping an eye out—he’d been the one to call out to Bucky.

“You wounded, corporal?” Bucky said, pulling the cloth covering his mouth down and flicking his eyes over everyone.  All of them privates and PFCs except for Dum Dum and him.

“Nah, it ain’t my blood,” Dum Dum said flatly, checking over his Thompson.  “Orders?”

Bucky kept a grimace off his face and dropped the extra rifles and ammo onto the ground.

“We hole up in here, grab any soldiers who come by, and try not to get the Nazis’ attention.  Slip back down to friendly territory when we can.”

“Yes, sir,” the soldiers said and settled down into the copse.

“Everyone, get some mud and leaves on you, we want the Germans to think we’re pretty pretty trees,” Bucky said.

He managed to get some weak chuckles out of them and sat by their lookout.  He wasn’t from Bucky’s squad—Dum Dum was the only one of his currently with him, and Bucky closed his eyes hoping for...something.

Stumbling footsteps made him open his eyes to see a figure stagger out toward them.

“It’s the one of the cooks,” the lookout said.

“Here man,” Bucky said.

The cook looked up, his dark skin gleaming with sweat, and came scrambling gracelessly into the thicket.

“Sergeant Barnes,” Bucky said, offering a hand to him.

“Gabe Jones,” the cook said, taking it.  “Thanks for calling out to me.”

“I’m not leaving any man in there,” Bucky said.  “Can you shoot a gun?”

“Yes, sir,” Jones said, his eyes widening a little.

Bucky directed him to the weaponry and turned back to the ambush.

Gunfire resumed, and Bucky peered between branches to see a small group of American soldiers by the exit of the valley exchanging fire.  The Nazis had the advantage of higher ground and Bucky clenched his hands to see their weaker position.

“We should be with them, sir,” the lookout said nervously.

“We aren’t crawling through Death Valley to try it,” Bucky said firmly.  “Don’t make me save you from yourself, soldier.”

“No, sir,” he said and shut his trap.

The Nazis stopped shooting for a moment and there was loud shouting in incomprehensible German.  Bucky glanced back at his men.

“Anyone know what they’re saying?” he said.

“I studied some German,” Jones said, frowning in concentrating.  “Better at French but I think...yeah, they’re telling us to cease fire and surrender.”

The other soldiers clustered around Bucky and the lookout, eyes fixed on the small group.

There was a long silence and Bucky wondered what the issue was.  There was no way for them to win; it’d be better to surrender and wait for the end of the war or be part of a trade between POWs than dying in the middle of nowhere.

Someone behind Bucky sucked in a sharp breath as the small group of Americans began shooting again, ducking behind what little cover they had.

“What the hell?” Dum Dum said, and they were all furious at the sheer waste.

“None of us know why the hell we’re in northern Italy, but it must have something to do with the reason they’re not letting us surrender,” Bucky said, fighting to keep his voice even.  “I doubt it’s a good reason, but you know how the damn brass think.”

“Sergeant,” Gabe said, looking horrified as faint German sounded above the salvos.    “They just said—”

Spheres were falling down into the valley and Bucky’s mind refused to understand it until fire bloomed and a concussive wave of sound blew into him.  The roar of sound from crashing rock filled his ears and the blast of heat and light almost seemed to brush his face.

“Those shit-stained sons of bitches,” Dum Dum whispered.

Bucky’s nails dug hard into his palms, he’d seen and done awful things but that had been the _wounded...._

“If there are any Americans hiding around, we are going to sweep the area and we _will_ find you,” a man shouted in heavily-accented English.  “Come out, hands up and disarmed, and perhaps the Führer will show pity on you, eh?”

“Orders?” Dum Dum said, and they were all looking at him.

Bucky had been a leader at school and in his family, but this was something terrifying.  The chain of command in the army was soothing—sure, you took orders, but you didn’t have to worry about anything besides following them; there was no responsibility or thinking about hard choices.  What the hell was the right call here?  And he couldn’t show them an ounce of uncertainty; most of the privates already looked spooked out of their minds; the slightest hint of fear from him would dissolve any bond holding them together and leave them a bunch of guys running around shooting guns.

“If the Nazis are scum enough to kill wounded, they sure as hell aren’t going to treat their prisoners any better,” Bucky said.  “Original plan still stands, we hope they don’t find us and try to report these events to Allied forces.  If a search party finds us, we disable it.”

Were they good orders?  Who the fuck knew.  Either way, it settled the men, and Dum Dum gave him a grim nod.

More German shouting, Jones hurriedly translating as best he could, telling them some of the Nazis were going down to check for survivors in the valley, others were going out to search for “Amerikaner.”

Crunching footsteps and pebbles tumbling down toward their grove warned them of someone’s approach.  A young man in a Nazi uniform ducked beneath a branch, his hands undoing the fly of his trousers and Bucky swung his pistol up and shot him between the eyes.

There was a beat where the men glanced between him and the corpse.

“Strip anything useful off of him, then cover him,” Bucky said, all his emotions locked down tightly.

He holstered his pistol and hoped the shot hadn’t been heard.  The next man to come across them might have to be strangled.  Bucky looked down at his hands, calloused and crusted with dirt with half-moons scored from his nails digging in.  He’d done it once before and he’d do it again to protect his men.

The men finished dragging branches over the corpse and Bucky ordered them to move out with maximum stealth.  They weren’t specially trained in forest and mountain terrain, and Bucky sweated under the responsibility and knowledge that he had no idea what he was doing.  He didn’t even know where they were supposed to be going or—

 Shouting erupted around them, Bucky looked at Jones and knew that they’d been made.  It was almost a relief to turn away from a future of wandering in the Alps in enemy territory flying by the seats of his pants to something he did know: fighting.

Firing started behind them, Bucky led them running into the forest away from the mud that would slow them down.  He kept his eyes peeled for any defensible position where they could hole up.

“Sarge,” Dum Dum gasped out.  “Look.”

The forest thinned out to show a site of recent battle judging by the craters scattered around, and Bucky felt hope rising up in his chest.  Maybe the brass hadn’t been crazy; there were other Allies around somewhere.

Louder gunfire prompted them to take cover in a crater, one of the privates hissing and clapping a hand to his left arm.

“Just a graze, sir,” he said to Bucky’s look.

“Wrap it up,” Bucky said.  “No point in running across open land, prepare to return fire.”

Dum Dum grinned ferociously, caressing his Thompson.  Jones settled his own rifle with a measure of calm, while the privates swallowed nervously.  No one came through the treeline yet, but there was clear shouting and movement in the forest toward them.

“Sir, are we gonna make it?” one of them asked.

Bucky looked at him; he looked so damn young, how did a kid like him get drafted when Bucky managed to escape until he was twenty-five?  Was it better or crueler to lie?  What the hell was he supposed to do?

“See these craters?” Bucky said, mind whirling to spin some story to make the kid feel better.  He couldn’t lie about their chances, but he could give him that.  “Means the brass weren’t outta their minds marching us up here.  I bet that’s why our guys didn’t surrender back there; they were giving the soldiers who got through the valley a chance to make it to a base.  That’s what we’re gonna do, distract these Nazi fucks so our guys got a chance to make it, okay?”

“Okay, sir,” the private said, blue eyes enormous with trust that made Bucky feel sick to his stomach.

“Good man,” Bucky said, slapping him on the back.

He made sure to clasp everyone’s shoulders, keeping a calm and determined look on his face, sending a sarcastic little salute to Dum Dum who returned it with a look of respect in his eyes.

“Hey Jones, you deserve a medal or somethin’,” Bucky said.  “Pretty sure there’s something for ‘above and beyond the requirements of duty’ and I don’t think translatin’ German and shooting Nazis are a part of a cook’s duty.”

Jones drew in a slow breath, hands fluttering on his rifle.

“There’s an all-black Infantry Division back in the states,” he said.  “I thought about joining it or the Tuskegee Airmen, but the infantry’s been stalled out since ’42 and I don’t have the head for heights.  I wanted to serve my country, in any way they’d have me, and I guess the Army likes my cooking skills.”

Bucky had been trying to avoid thinking about Steve, like he did whenever fighting broke out and Bucky had to do dirty things in the name of staying alive, but Jones’ simply stated words about serving made his breath catch in his throat.

“As your current commanding officer, I can tell you the Army appreciates more than your cookin’,” Bucky said as lightly as he could and got a chuckle out of the other man.  “Glad to have you with us.”

He clapped Jones on the shoulder too, then turned his gaze to the tree line, pulling his Springfield rifle off of his shoulder and feeling the metal in his hands.  Training had made him comfortable with it, experience made it feel like an extension of his will.

“Here they come,” squeaked out the private that had been their lookout in the copse.

Bucky squinted through the scope on the Springfield into the trees and the soldier had good eyes because after a few moments Nazis began stepping out of the woods.

“Fire at will, but try not to waste bullets,” Bucky said, then fell into the ultra-focused stillness that he drew on when he had a goal.

Inhale.  Aim.  Exhale.  Fire.  Confirm a kill.  Fire again if necessary.  Next target.  Reload.  Repeat.

He swore when he ran out of stripper clips, blinking out of his concentration and throwing aside the rifle.  It landed with a dull thump on a body; Bucky dug his nails hard into his hands and picked up another rifle, a fucking M1 Carbine, piece of shit waste of metal.

He tried it for a few shots, then threw it aside with another curse, what was the point of a gun that couldn’t kill an enemy even with several bullets?  Jones was firing methodically next to him, the only sign of strain on his face the sweat that was dripping down his cheeks—which was a hell of a lot more composed than most rookies.  Dum Dum still had a fierce grin fixed on his face as he fired his Thompson.

“Got any guns that ain’t shit?” Bucky yelled.

“M1 Garand up to your picky standards, sarge?” Dum Dum shouted back.

“As long as it ain’t a fucking Carbine, I’ll treasure it like a dame,” Bucky retorted, grabbing the Garand.

The Nazis suddenly drew back and Bucky took a quick head count.  Five killed, three wounded; Bucky briskly took the dog tags off of their dead.

“Amerikaner!  Surrender now, or we will shell that crater!”

 _Fuck_.  Fuck, fuck, fuck, shit fuck, goddammit.

Bucky’d done a lot of things he hadn’t been proud of in the last few months, crossed a lot of lines that would horrify civilized society.  But he wasn’t strong enough to send his men to death for a single statement of defiance, no matter what the fuck propaganda wanted them to do.

“Stand down,” he said to his men.  He raised his voice.  “We surrender.”

“Come out, slowly, hands in the air.”

One of the privates was closest to the edge, and as soon as most of his body was out from cover a gunshot rang out and he fell back on top of their lookout.  They could hear comments from the Nazis but the laughter needed no translation.

“Shit-stained cocksucking sons of bitches,” Dum Dum said.

Bucky inhaled.  Shoved down everything.  Exhaled.  Ran through their nonexistent options.

“Oh God, oh God, what do we do?” the privates were moaning and Bucky couldn’t scrounge up another fucking order.  He gritted his teeth and peered over the edge of the crater, Garand at the ready.

“Go out guns blazing, right Sarge?” Dum Dum said.

“You have any more ammo for that Thompson?” he said.

“Who needs ammo when you can get to know the enemy so much better with a bayonet?” Dum Dum said cheerfully.

“I think they lied about their artillery, Sergeant,” Jones said.

Bucky blew out another breath.

“Same orders, fellas,” he said with a studied nonchalance.  “Kill as many fuckin’ Nazis as possible, and as a plus we won’t have to sleep in the mud tonight.”

He started shooting then, because if he had to talk up any more cheerful lies he was gonna puke.  His focus was shot to hell though, because he couldn’t shut out the sounds around him; the meaty, wet sound as bullets dug into flesh, the choked gurgles and delirious moaning, the gunblasts ringing in his ears, everyone’s harsh, panting breathing—

“D’you hear that, Sarge?” Dum Dum said.

“If I recall, all this trouble started when you asked me that same question earlier,” Bucky said.

“Heh,” Dum Dum said.  “But really, Sarge, I think I hear some kind of heavy machinery, maybe a tank.”

“How you hear anything in this mess is a fuckin’ miracle, Dum Dum,” Bucky said, and tried to listen for a tank.

The Nazis started yelling in panic and they left their tree cover; Bucky took advantage until his rifle clicked empty, hope rising up in his chest.  If the Nazis were running then...then...!

He could hear the heavy movement of metal over terrain and some unfamiliar weaponry noise.  He peeked out again and saw blue ( _blue?_ ) flashes of light and heard a lot of screaming that cut off abruptly.  A Nazi was running close by and right in front of Bucky’s eyes, a blast of blue light hit him in the back and he was gone.  Not even his gun was left.

“What the fuck?” Bucky said.

“Well this would explain why the brass was so hush hush,” Dum Dum said, his own eyes huge.

“It’s as unnerving as my Aunt Matilda after her Sunday sherry,” Bucky said.  “But considerin’ the circumstances, I’m feeling pretty charitable.”

He did a quick headcount, feeling his gut tighten at the fact that there were just seven men remaining, including himself, with one wounded, as the other two had bled out.  He grabbed the other six dogtags and shoved the clinking metal into a pouch before heaving himself out of the crater.  Bucky reached down and pulled out Jones, then Dum Dum, then left the two of them to help the others out.  He walked towards the tank, which had broken free of the treeline and was disconcertingly facing straight at them.

Bucky slapped on a smile and held out his arms.

“Hey, you guys showed up just in time,” he shouted, making sure to let them know he was American and on their side.  “Another few seconds and we’d have been goners.”

“It’s not too late for that, Sergeant.”

The German-accented voice was muffled from the tank, but the smile dropped off of Bucky’s face instantly.

“Disarm yourselves.”

Numb, Bucky unslung his useless rifle and threw it on the ground, he unholstered his Colt and did the same.  The men came up behind him, the same sense of shocked defeat overing over them.  When all their weaponry was on the ground (he deliberately ignored the knife tucked into his boot), the top of the tank opened and black clad soldiers with bizarre goggle helmets came out, equally bizarre weapons pointed at them.  The weapons had the same eerie blue glow as the other lights earlier; what the hell had they gotten into?

Another man, this one wearing what looked like an officer’s uniform, came sliding down the tank, a pleased smile under his bristly mustache.

“More workers, mostly in good condition,” he said.  “The Obergruppenführer will be pleased.  Töte die Verletzte.  Soldaten zieht!”

“Jawohl, Standartenführer!”

Before Bucky could twitch, one of the soldiers leveled the glowing gun somewhere behind him, fired once, the eerie noise of it crawling up his spine.  He turned to see two of his men, wide-eyed, their hands still open and towards each other, like they’d been holding something.  Or holding up someone.

“Shit-stained, cocksucking, pig-fucking sons of bitches,” Dum Dum said very, very softly.

Bucky started trembling, something bubbling up in him—a scream, a laugh, a sob.  His arms were roughly yanked behind his back and secured with metal and the gun prodded him in the back, sending more crawls up his back from the contact with the unnatural thing.

“Verdammter Amerikaner,” he heard a soldier say, before he and his men were shoved to follow in the wake of the tank rolling slowly forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It would have been really neat if my story could have alternating POVs with each chapter. It really would have been. But I think next chapter is still gonna be Bucky's, the poor guy.
> 
> Also, I feel like I should put a "slow burn" tag or something, cause we aren't anywhere close to soulmate feels....freaking world-building tendencies.
> 
> Tell me what you think!
> 
> Bonus info on Steve and Bucky's soulmark: I imagine it to be some mix between art deco and [futurism.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism) You can read some of the interesting ideas associated with the latter art movement, notably their passionate nationalism and glorification of war/beautiful ideas worth dying for.
> 
> A LOT of research and ranting went into this chapter.  
> [Here are examples of draft letters.](http://www.nationalww2museum.org/learn/education/for-students/ww2-history/take-a-closer-look/draft-registration-documents.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/)  
> [Shoe rationing.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_1943#February_12.2C_1943_.28Friday.29)  
> [Train](https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091228190744AAjcoUD) [stuff.](http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/express-train-crosses-the-nation-in-83-hours)  
> Rant 1. Why the hell is Bucky in Fort McCoy, WI? There are [three](http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/camp-ww2.htm) training camps in New York alone, not even counting all the others in the northeast region. Steve himself went to one in New Jersey, which I believe more than a random Wisconsin jaunt.  
> But you know what? It's ok, because Fort McCoy was [hella](http://www.mccoy.army.mil/AboutUs/History/FMCHistHrtg.pdf) interesting as an internment camp for POWs, the largest training site for army nurses, and _also_ was the training site for the all-Nisei 100th Infantry Battalion, who had "one of the most outstanding battle records of any unit in WWII." Sadly, Bucky didn't get to meet the 100th because they shipped out to Camp Shelby on Jan 6.  
>  Rant 2. Speaking of infantry divisions, turns out the 107th got [divided](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/107th_Infantry_Regiment_\(United_States\)) up into 3 different divisions in 1943, none of which were called the 107th. The 107th was reorganized in 1946. Sigh. My solution? Curse Marvel and pretend the 107th totally existed.  
> [Army](http://vicmathias.com/content/world-war-ii-%E2%80%93-fun-and-games-basic-training-1944) [training](http://www.americainwwii.com/galleries/welcome-to-the-service-son/) with a [source](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/24512102/ns/us_news-military/t/army-reacts-after-video-reveals-shoddy-barracks/) on barracks.  
> Awesome army nurse [info!](https://www.med-dept.com/articles/the-army-nurse-corps/)  
> [Insignias](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/%22Insignia_of_the_Army_of_the_United_States%22_-_NARA_-_514627.jpg) circa WW2.  
> [V-mail](https://about.usps.com/publications/pub100.pdf) [info](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-mail) with bonus [censorship.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship)  
> Rant 3. How the hell is Bucky (and everyone else) in northern Italy? Gah, the [furthest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_United_States_during_World_War_II#European_and_North_African_Theaters) Allied forces got was up to the Gothic line around July/August 1944. In Oct 1943, they were still around the Volturno line. My solution? Pretend the SSR had fancy, secret stuff....  
> Rant 4. Gabe Jones could not have been in Italy as an army private in 1943. The [only](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/92nd_Infantry_Division_\(United_States\)) African-American infantry division to see combat in Europe wasn't overseas until Sep. 22, 1944. The [Tuskegee Airmen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Airmen) were flying missions in Italy in 1943, but the wikia states he was in the 92nd Infantry Division.... African-Americans were [serving](http://www.nationalww2museum.org/assets/pdfs/african-americans-in-world.pdf) all throughout WW2 in other roles, which is what I went with. For my sanity.  
> A final link to WW2 [weaponry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_World_War_II_infantry_weapons#.C2.A0United_States_of_America), with cross-checking with the MCU wikia for each soldier (ofc Hollywood gets the damn weapons right ofc.)  
> Also did random German research (if it's wrong, please correct me), random SS rank research, troop transport, checking if pine trees are in northern Italy (yes), a lot of squinting at WW2 maps, figuring out gun stuff, random OED checking to make sure my diction isn't horribly off instead of just badly.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which the author struggled with characters going off script and realized that this was going to be longer than eight chapters....
> 
> The thing about the MCU is it's really hard to tell what's canon or not, considering the long, changing storylines and multimedia format-so I guess I'll just pick and choose yay? This chapter has pickings and choosings from the events in the comic Captain America: First Vengeance.
> 
> Also, because I know how annoying/curious-making it is to not have translations, hover over the French/German for an English text box. Disclaimer: am not British or German, and my French may be rusty, apologies for any errors.
> 
> Additional warnings: nationalistic slurs, foul language.

_October 1943_

The first thing their German-yet-not-Nazi captors did was split them up. What little Bucky saw of the compound told him it was large and well-armed, before they were shoved into dark cells in the lower floors. He could hear noises echoing—telling him that the cells were extensive and that there were a lot of people held captive here.

Dum Dum and Jones were shoved into the same cell as him, but his other three men were taken elsewhere. Bucky’s hands clenched; he couldn’t look out for them. He breathed in and out slowly, shaking them out of his thoughts. He couldn’t worry about things outside of his control; he had to focus on making it through this.

Bucky’s eyes finally adjusted to the dim light filtering down through the barred circular holes in the ceiling and he saw that they weren’t alone in the cell. Two other men were lounging on the floor, as far from each other as possible. One had a red beret on his head, studiously smoothing down the collar of his jacket, while the other slumped down with an expression that reminded Bucky of a tired old bulldog. The two were opposites in dress; the man with the red beret had a fastidiously well-kept uniform regarding the circumstances, the other had a worn, wrinkled button-up and pants to match his drooping face.

“Hello there,” Bucky said cautiously, because it looked like it was up to him to speak.

Red beret sniffed immediately.

“Oh, _Yankees_ ,” he said disdainfully. “Wonderful, bloody fantastic. I wouldn’t have imagined worse company than a rifle-dropping frog, but the Fritzes have managed to surpass themselves.”

"J’en ai assez de toi, Monsieur Rosbif, ferme ta gueule et va te faire enculer,” said the other.

Jones made a little choking noise and Bucky’s eyes darted around the cell in recognition of the sheer amount of animosity present.

“Ok,” Bucky said slowly. “I think that was French and you’re clearly a Brit, so since we’re allies—”

“Piss off you gormless pillock,” red beret said, turning his head to look out toward the other dimly visible cells.

“Je m’en fou,” said the other, and turned his back completely.

Bucky let out a long breath, then found himself slumping down to the ground. He put his head in his hands. He’d tried once and didn’t much feel like giving another damn about the Brit and the Frenchie; he wasn’t any fancy CO with some sparkly duty to keep up relations with their “allies.” A patrol marched over the ceilings, incomprehensible German drifting down along with the dust motes illuminated by the weak light.

It really sunk in then, that he was at the mercy of some mysterious German force, that out of a whole battalion only the six of them had survived. His future was uncertain and-and—

Bucky dug his nails hard into his palms; he’d be damned if he broke down in front of two foreigners even if memories were crowding into his head with full sound and smell—the smell of gunpowder, blood, effluvia—sound of screaming, sobbing, deafening explosions—sprays of reds and browns mixing together until it seemed like there was no difference between blood and mud— _for dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return—_

He squeezed his eyes closed tightly and groped for a shred of control—nothing, nothing. Out of desperation he broke his resolve and reached out for Steve to escape what was going on in his own head.

_—idleness, undercurrent of excitement, thoughtful—_

—his fingers holding a pencil finishing up drawing the last curve on a steam cloud puffing out of a train, his hand moving out of the way to show the rough outline of Italy—

What the hell?

Bucky’s eyes opened in shock and he almost didn’t know where he was for a moment. Dum Dum and Jones were lost in their own thoughts, sitting by him, their arms draped across the tops of their knees. He scrubbed at the flaking mud on his lower legs and boots, then slowly pulled off his watch to squint at his soulmark. Everyone knew that some wonky stuff went on with soulmates, wonky enough that half the witch hunts in medieval Europe had been against them, and all of the Greek myths said impossible things about them—he’d never believed in the rumors until he’d woken up one day with Steve-sense in his head.

But this was new. Bucky’d never really heard of seeing out of his soulmate’s eyes; if that had been what had happened instead of some delirious hallucination. And why was Steve drawing Italy anyway? Had he heard of the Allied victories in Sicily? Was he thinking of Bucky?

Bucky was suddenly furious at him; Steve had just fell off the face of the earth, no letters, nothing for four months, for all of his promises to take care of Bucky’s family—this was part of the reason he’d been avoiding thinking about his soulmate—he didn’t have time to be angry at someone who was his foundation, not while trying to hold onto some semblance of humanity when everything was going to pieces around him.

“You alright, Sarge?” Dum Dum said quietly next to him, eyeing the two men across from them balefully.

“Call me Bucky,” he said tiredly. “I’m not anyone’s ‘Sarge’ in some rotten Heinie prison in the Alps. Same to you, Jones.”

“Call me Gabe, then,” Gabe said. “The both of you.”

“Right. Bucky,” Dum Dum said. “People call me Dum Dum; and now that the pleasantries are over, what’s bothering you? Aside from the Limey and the snail-snapper over there.”

Bucky shoved his left wrist out to them and they regarded it confusedly. Gabe took a closer look and then let out a soft whistle.

“Must be nice to have a pretty gal who’s meant for you in the world,” Gabe said almost enviously.

“It ain’t a dame,” Bucky said, a half-smile inching across his face. He’d only ever thought about a girl soulmate before he’d met Steve; after, anyone else just seemed wrong. “His name’s Steve and he’s a pain in my ass.”

“A...man?” Dum Dum said, eyeing him warily.

“Same sex soulmates are platonic,” Bucky said wearily, tired from the constant need to repeat that reassurance. “He’s just my best guy.”

“So...what about him?” Gabe said.

“Soulmate things,” Bucky said inadequately, unsure of how to explain without sounding crazy. “We’re in each other’s heads, and mostly it’s just knowing how Steve feels; once I managed to hear what he was thinking—”

He paused at their matching expressions of disbelief mixed with wariness.

“It’s just how it is,” he said half-heartedly. “Don’t ask me why or how, no one knows how soulmates work.”

“I hear soulmates eventually turn into the same person,” Dum Dum said, chewing on his mustache and giving him a speculative look.

Bucky snorted hard, then all the roiling emotion turned that into helpless laughter that verged on hysterics before he managed to cut it off.

“Oh man,” he said, one hand massaging his aching head. “If you ever met Steve, you’d know that’s not true. He’s the most stubborn man I’ve ever met; no way he’d change himself one bit, and I ain’t no pushover either.”

“I took a Greek mythology class at Howard,” Gabe said. “Psyche wandered the earth until her bond led her to Eros; you got something like that?”

“No,” Bucky said. “Sounds useful as hell though, wouldn’t mind knowing where Steve is at the moment. Punk hasn’t sent me any letters and I’m worried as hell. He wanted to join the army so bad—he falsified four different registration forms—what if someone figured it out and put him in the clink? Like I don’t have enough to worry about.”

“Well you can’t do anything about it right now,” Dum Dum said with brutal practicality. “We’re POWs of the Nazis.”

“Not Nazis,” Bucky said, leaning his head back against the cold metal bars. “They shot those Nazis for us.”

“Makes you wonder what they want us for,” Gabe said.

Tension tried to run through Bucky, but he was so damn tired. He should be planning his next move, keeping up morale....or something. He looked down at his muddied uniform, his socks feeling crunchy in his boots, and flexed his foot. The small boot knife pressed in against his ankle; a last resort for a hopeless situation.

“Tiens, tu sais pourquoi sommes-nous ici?” Gabe said.

Bucky glanced over at him to see him addressing the Frenchie. The man didn’t give any indication he’d heard Gabe speak. His passive resistance somehow irritated Bucky more than the Brit’s haughtiness.

“Est-ce que les allemands vont nous ordonner de travailler ou peut-être ils vont nous interroger?” Gabe persisted.

Only the slightest hunching of the Frenchie’s shoulders let on that he wasn’t deaf. Bucky’s eyes narrowed but Dum Dum beat him to it.

“Hey, Gabe,” he said, far too carelessly for the expression on his face.

“What’s that, Dum Dum?” Gabe said, frowning slightly.

“You know how many Frenchmen it takes to defend Paris?”

“How many?”

“I don’t know; they’ve never tried.”

The fight that broke out in their tiny circular cell was quiet aside from low grunts and the meaty sounds of impact. Even completely despairing and bitter, it wasn’t in Bucky to go against a lone man with two others, but the Frenchie was lashing out at all of them like he was ready to drag them all to hell. The Brit was sneering in his own spot until he got trod on one too many times and joined the fight with a few of his bizarre English curses. The other men in the cells eventually noticed and started yelling in encouragement—out of boredom, Bucky thought wildly, since this must be the best entertainment in Nowhere Prison—which brought the Germans banging their truncheons on the top of their cell.

“Hör auf damit!”

The sound of the cell door opening made Bucky spin around, his blood roaring in his ears; he’d love to punch a fuckin’ Kraut in their stinkin’ faces, make them bleed and scream like the Americans he’d seen die over and over in fields, in ditches, in forests. He got in one satisfying blow to one of their faces before a truncheon slammed into his gut. It, like the rest of their strange weapons, packed an extra skin-crawling punch, and Bucky found himself gasping on the ground in agony as boots continued the beating.

“Amerikanisch Schwein,” one of them said in a nasal, muffled voice.

There was more German shouting that Bucky couldn’t focus on, not when they were adding in the truncheons on top of the kicking. He curled up to protect himself as best he could, his ears ringing and his eyes squeezed shut.

A sharp voice—officer, Bucky fuzzily thought—stopped the soldiers. Bucky bit his lip to stop himself from groaning; he’d be damned if the Germans would get anything out of him.

“Not even a day at our facility and already you are causing trouble,” the officer said.

Bucky dimly heard steps approaching him, the rustle of wool, and the smell of shoe-shine and leather. Something nudged under his chin and tilted his head up.

“An officer should set a better example for his men.”

 

They had to drag him back into the cell after his punishment—which consisted of leaving him tied up outside in the freezing courtyard for who knew how long. Bucky’d tried to focus on memorizing the details of the artillery and training exercises there, but as he’d lost feeling in his extremities his mind had started to drift away.

The Krauts weren’t gentle about throwing him back into the blissfully warm cell, and Dum Dum and Gabe immediately started fussing over him.

“’m alright,” Bucky mumbled through chattering teeth. “Just...nee’ some sleep.”

“That was the height of folly,” the Brit said snobbily. “Attacking our captors; are you mad? Nothing good could have come from it.”

Bucky glared at him as best he could with a frozen face.

“I might be riled up from the battlefield, but I ain’t stupid enough to forget who the real enemy is,” he said. “I’d do it again, but aim lower next time.”

“Alright, Sarg—Bucky, ignore the Limey and get some rest,” Dum Dum said. “The Frenchie told us they make us work assembling equipment starting early in the morning.”

“Yeah, alright,” Bucky said, and gratefully closed his eyes.

 

The next morning, the tromp of boots across the metal ceiling woke them up. Bucky let out an involuntary groan at the soreness in his body. He shivered, still feeling the lingering chill, and the shivers turned into trembling and an awareness of a full-body ache.

Dum Dum let out an enormous bellow as he vaulted to his feet and stretched, leading to distant complaints from other cells. Bucky wanted to bury his aching head into the concrete floor. Dum Dum’s morning energy was insufferable on the best of days even with coffee to help; today, it seemed better to die.

“Would you shut it, you barmy Yank?” the Brit said.

“Rise and shine, Limey,” Dum Dum said extremely cheerfully. “Let’s ‘ave a spot o’ tea, eh?”

Even Bucky could tell that accent was pretty horrific. He let out a long groan that distracted them from another possible fight, and damn, he did sound pretty bad.

“Alright there, Sar-Bucky?” Dum Dum said.

Bucky inhaled and broke off into wracking coughs that jarred his sore body and increased the tension in his head. A shadow fell over him; Gabe rested a hand against Bucky’s forehead and let out a slow whistle.

“You’re burning up, Bucky,” he said.

“Fucking Heinies,” Dum Dum said. “Can you move?”

“Yeah...yeah,” Bucky said, and eased himself slowly off the ground into a sitting position.

“Le matin, les Boches nous donnent le petit déj—si on peut appeler la bouillie comme bonne nourriture,” the Frenchie said in an offhandedly friendly way.

Everyone looked at him, then Dum Dum and Bucky looked at Gabe.

“He said they give us breakfast every morning, and gave me the impression it’s not five-star cuisine,” Gabe said.

Bucky snorted a bit before it hurt too much.

“Wouldn’t that be a thing to see,” he said. “Imprisoned in a mystery Kraut base in the Alps with complimentary haute cuisine.”

“Could be that a Frenchie has got some fancy tastes—” Dum Dum said.

“Enough of that,” Bucky said as sharply as he could. “We were all out of sorts yesterday, but we are allies. The real enemies are those stinkin’ Krauts. And this man’s remembered that too, seeing as he’s volunteering useful information.”

He looked over at the Frenchman who was watching him with intent brown eyes. Bucky held out a hand to him.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th Regiment,” he said. “Thank you for your help; call me Bucky.”

“Jacques Dernier, résistant de Marseille,” he said.

“Major Falsworth, a _Birmingham_ Falsworth, of his Majesty’s 3rd Independent Parachute Brigade,” the Brit said.

“No one asked you, your lordship,” Dum Dum said.

“I’d hardly let a Frog fulfill social niceties before a red-blooded Englishman,” Falsworth said coolly. “And like Barnes said, it wouldn’t do to forget our true enemies.”

The clanging above their heads stopped and Bucky concentrated on listening for other signs of German approach. He could hear murmurs from the other cells, but it was far more subdued than he would expect, even considering the circumstances. A faint rattling echoed through the place and then curses began from the direction of the door. The clanging restarted, but stopped periodically, and grew louder.

“They drop a few hunks of bread in from between the bars above our heads,” Falsworth said bitterly. “We get fed a little more around supper time—if the work supervisor has found our efforts satisfactory. That’s how they keep us hemmed in, aside from separating all of us, hemmed in with hunger and fear.”

Bucky looked up to see a dark figure drop bread into their cell, the crumbs falling onto his face as he caught a chunk. The others grabbed their own pieces and started gnawing at them. Bucky had never felt less hungry in his life, which upon second thought was truly concerning. Winnifred Barnes had not raised her son to turn up his nose at any food and he’d always been able to eat no matter the circumstances—a trait that came in handy as a soldier covered in shit and guts.

He brought the bread up to his lips, feeling the coarseness brushing against his chapped lips, inhaling a stale, almost chalky smell, and brushed the tip of his tongue against it. The bread seemed to suck out all the moisture in his mouth at that small touch, and Bucky put it down when he started coughing, choking almost at the dryness in his throat.

“Tastes like sand-coated rock,” Dum Dum said, wrinkling his nose. He noticed Bucky’s piece lying untouched in his hand, and frowned. “Gotta eat, Sarge. That fever is burning through your body’s stores like a fire in a cornfield.”

“I wonder if this is what Steve felt like whenever I fussed at him like a mother hen,” Bucky said.

“Oh, you want to see fussing? I can show you fussing,” Dum Dum said. “My mam fussed us into obedient, God-fearing children who’d wear their itchy woolen long underwear without so much as a peep of protest.”

Another chuckle escaped Bucky, jolting along his bones and pained muscles. He mechanically bit off a tiny chunk, chewed, swallowed, and forced himself to repeat it until the bread was a heavy lump in his stomach. He felt like something that had been ground up and spat out, and to add insult to injury, he really had to piss even though his mouth felt like a desert.

“They ever give us a chance to piss in this hellhole?” Bucky said.

Dum Dum groaned.

“Great, now I’m thinking about how much I need to piss,” he said.

“There are latrines in in the assembly line,” Falsworth said. “We’ll be taken out there soon enough.”

It was both too soon and too slow by the time the Krauts came clomping through the cells with their black visored helmets and deceptively innocuous black truncheons. Pairs of guards unlocked each circular cell, one taking the lead, the other following after the prisoners. When two guards stopped in front of their cell, it took a worrying amount of effort to lever himself off the ground, and when he was on his feet, his head spun and spots ran in front of his eyes.

Gabe steadied him without alerting the guards to his dizziness, for which Bucky was extremely grateful. He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other and fixing his eyes on Dum Dum’s dirty boots. The lighting grew brighter with a slight edge of blue and they were led down gray walled hallways. Bucky lost track of the direction and turns they took, and hoped that someone was looking to memorize them. The light seemed to stab into his eyes and he had to swallow heavily a few times as his stomach protested against the bread.

The latrines were a row of holes in concrete in one large room; not the worst place that Bucky had pissed by any means. He relieved himself, and even though it was a small thing, it did make him feel a little less awful with one less thing to wear on him.

After that, they were led into a warehouse full of machinery and assembly lines, surrounded by the black clad soldiers, where an officer awaited with his hands clasped behind his back.

“I am Obersturmführer Kleiber—Lieutenant, for those of you unfortunate enough to be ignorant of the beauty of the Teutonic language. The terms of your existence here are simple: do your work agreeably and we will have no problems. If this is unacceptable to you, our scientists would be delighted to have your company and have no need of your cooperation. If our scientists find you useless, then you will be executed and your body left in the Alps. There is no room for idle mouths here.”

Kleiber regarded them behind his round spectacles, his smooth-shaven face solemn.

“The newly arrived men will work on the shells today. The rest of you know your tasks. Begin.”

Falsworth heaved a put-upon sigh and gestured at them to follow him.

“The Frog and I assemble the shells as well today, come along.”

The work was mind-numbing, but soothing in its unthinking repetition, filling cylinders with charges, capping them, painting them black with two stripes of pale blue. Bucky noted the matching color scheme with wry amusement, but was mostly relieved that the work didn’t require physical exertion. Shell assembly required precision: the slightest error would result in a fuse going off too late or too early, the consequences of either being very unpleasant to a soldier in the field. But as he was making weapons for the enemy, Bucky felt a quiet vindictiveness every time his hand was too shaky and missed some of the powder into a shell.

Hours passed and Bucky’s feeling of general shittiness had plateaued, which at least meant that it wasn’t getting any worse. He could hear the others’ stomachs rumbling—worryingly, it felt like his stomach had left him permanently. The soldiers guarding them changed out on what Bucky guessed was every hour, and eventually they came to attention as Kleiber left and another officer arrived.

“Keep your head down,” Falsworth said grimly. “That’s Colonel Lohmer; he’s a tosser of the worst sort.”

Lohmer walked around the facility observing all of them, and as he drew closer, Bucky’s teeth clenched. He recognized that Chaplin mustache and sneering look. This Lohmer had been the one to bring them in, to order his wounded man killed, to have Bucky tied outside last night.

The man passed behind him, and Bucky’s hands convulsed around the tube in front of him. He was seized by the irrational urge to grab his boot knife and sink it into Lohmer.

_Inhale._

It wouldn’t be a guaranteed kill.

_Exhale._

He had to remember his real goals: stay alive, make it to Ellie’s graduation, find Steve and kick him in the pants.

His hands shook as he filled the tube, closed it, and sent it down the line.

 

Bucky lost track of how many days passed in the weapons facility. Their days were spent rotating between assembling shells, glowing blue power cells, and aircraft and tanks. He still felt terrible and couldn’t shake an intermittent, heavy cough that appeared frequently at night—which made him a disliked man among the prisoners.

Whenever they weren’t working, they were shut up again in the dimly lit cells. It was claustrophobic and oppressive. The Krauts seemed to be as bored as they were, but they could take their amusement in little indignities, like knocking off Dum Dum’s bowler hat or Lohmer’s frequent lectures on the inferiority of the Allied powers or his random bursts of ill-temper against prisoners.

The grey environment seemed to leach good humor and energy out of them, setting them all on edge with only each other for targets. Bucky had to break up more fights in his cell and had to listen to dozens of others—the worst being when someone was killed during one.

As the Krauts dragged out the body, Falsworth let out a gasp, then turned his head violently away. Bucky glanced again at the corpse and saw a red beret like Falsworth’s drop off its head.

“One of yours?” he said hoarsely. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Falsworth said in an ugly tone. “Bugger off with your sorries, Yank, when it was one of yours that did it.”

Dum Dum was on his feet instantly and Falsworth leapt up as well. Underneath the anger, Bucky saw hopeless despair and grief on Falsworth’s face—and he understood it, who among them didn’t?

_“Stand down, Corporal Dugan.”_

He managed to say it with perfect icy command, then broke down into agonizing coughing that hit his chest like a hundred knife slices. Fuzzily, he thought his hacking sounded a lot like Steve in the winter...it was almost winter again, wasn’t it, they’d been captured in October and so much time had passed...when he found Steve again he’d make him drink fifty cups of peppermint tea in one sitting, the bastard, the absolute bastard—

_—nerves, heart pounding, focus focus—_

—the metal back of a shield, brassy music playing, a filled theatre with shouts in a British accent—

“—Bucky, Bucky, are you alright? Wake up, Sarge!”

“What?” Bucky said.

It took a surprising amount of effort to peel open his eyes. Fuzzy figures were leaning over him and he batted at them with an arm that felt like it weighed like a hundred pounds. He struggled up, other arms and hands helping him into a sitting position. 

“Don’t tell me I swooned like a nancy,” Bucky croaked out.

“You’re getting worse, Sarge,” Dum Dum said, his face serious and set. “The Heinies have got to have a doctor in this place—”

“Dum Dum, they killed our wounded,” Bucky said flatly. “Our only value to them is our ability to work; what do you think they’ll do to me if they think I can’t? Kleiber said some shit about scientists—I ain’t keen to become an experiment, you hear?”

“Yes sir,” Dum Dum said.

Bucky leaned his head back against the bars, feeling completely drained of everything. It was ironic if he thought about it, the fact that he ended up sick like Steve, working in a factory instead of fighting as a soldier, it was enough to make him want to laugh. It hurt to breath.

Was this what Steve felt? Every breath a challenge until it almost preferable to not breath at all; limbs that were sluggish and every motion a Herculean effort, a mind that wandered and circled, always around the unending awareness of pain pain and pain.

Almost without thinking, his hand pulled off his watch and he traced their soulmark. The black lines were a breath of home to him, a sight as familiar as Brooklyn’s streets, his ma’s face, Steve’s laugh.

A thought slid lazily through his mind, and he seized it before it could slide away.

“Dum Dum,” he said abruptly. “I’ve said it before, but let this be the last time. No more fighting our allies. Enough shit has happened to all of us.”

Another thought, a surprising reminder; he reached into his right pocket and drew out twelve dog-tags; how could he have forgotten with its weight? The metal had been too tightly bundled to clink in the pocket, but he shouldn’t have forgotten. But he didn’t want to look at the names and numbers of the lost.

He set them down on the concrete floor with metallic clatters, and met Dum Dum’s eyes. He looked down, reaching up and taking off his bowler hat. Gabe let out a long breath.

“You kept those? I don’t even remember you taking them off the men,” he said.

“Gotta have something of them to take back to their families,” Bucky said. “God knows nothing else is gonna make it back.”

He stared at his hands, calloused, wrinkled, stained with whatever chemicals the factory used.

“You know somethin’?” he said. “I’ve seen a lotta people die in a lotta bad ways, but the one that bugs me the most is the last one. Death is ugly but those glowy blue things are unnatural. Those fucking blue weapons don’t leave anything behind—they’re just gone. I don’t know that man’s name, what squad he was in, nothing. He made it out, he was supposed to live, and he dissolved like salt in water.”

“The man who died,” Falsworth said abruptly. “Just now. His name was William Andrew Dorsey. He was one of my lieutenants, the only one left of what remains of the 3rd Parachute Brigade. No chance, of course, that the Fritzes will give me his discs.”

Falsworth let out a rough sound that was a sob masquerading as a laugh, sliding his head forward onto his knees, his arm dragging off his beret.

“How many of you were taken by the Fritzes?” he asked them.

“I only know of six of us out of our regiment,” Bucky said softly. “We think—hope—that more made it out that we don’t know of—”

“An entire regiment? That’s almost a thousand men lost,” Falsworth said blankly. “That puts quite a perspective on things. My entire brigade is less than half of that—”

“You can’t measure men’s lives like that,” Gabe said calmly. “This isn’t some kind of competition of who lost more.”

“Isn’t it? Isn’t it? I am Major James Montgomery Falsworth, senior operations officer for my brigade. My duties and responsibilities included coordinating intelligence, logistics, communications, and personnel. Much of my time was spent planning the movement of my men, calculating the most efficient use of their flesh and blood, compiling the lists of the dead like account-checking the spent currency of life.

“You—you Americans come into this war two years after the world has been eaten up by this German madman and his Japanese dogs—after our land has been salted with shells and fertilized by blood—you come swaggering in with your loud, boorish ways, yapping on about ‘coming over and winning the war just like last time,’ flashing your money around, sneering at our war-torn cities—this has been nothing other than a competition.”

There was silence in their cell, the rustling and murmurs from the other cells sharply highlighting the contrast. Bucky dug through his head, trying to pull some platitude from the feverish mess, tensely aware of the passing seconds where everyone just stared at each other, guilt and anger weighing on all of them.

“T’as rien à dire, rosbif, ton pays es toujours libre—et tu ne fais rien sauf râler comme une bique hargneuse. Dis-lui, M. Jones, qu’il est rien qu’un petit connard mécontent avec le visage d’un chien.”

The silence was broken by Dernier, sitting quietly in his corner, with his hangdog posture, wrinkled clothes, a hand rubbing his mustache. He was staring intently at Gabe, who looked grim.

“Je ne veux pas le mettre en colère; ça ne sert à rien. On doit essayer de vivre en ensemble,” he replied.

Bucky was torn between demanding Gabe to tell them what was going on, and let them babble on in French to break the tension in the air.

“Le rosbif doit savoir qu’il est imbuvable—bof, il peut rester comme imbécile, je m'en fiche.”

With a little shrug of his shoulders, Dernier turned his head away and dropped back into silence. Gabe let out a tiny breath and squared his shoulders.

“What was that all about?” Dum Dum said.

“I couldn’t catch all of it,” Gabe said. “They don’t teach half the vocabulary he uses in my college classes.”

He seemed relieved that everyone in the cell let it drop, and Bucky resolved to try and find a way to speak to him alone about the whole issue. He rubbed a hand through his greasy hair, then dragged the hand down over his face, rubbing it through the scratchy growth on his jaw, covering his mouth as another hacking fit shuddered through him.

Another patrol clanked above them, making the light streaming down into their cell flicker. Shadows played across Falsworth’s drawn face, his red beret still clutched in his hand. His haunted expression—so different than his usual snooty hauteur—called on Bucky’s own demons; he turned to face Dum Dum to try and distract himself.

“You know how long we’ve been in here?” Bucky said. “I haven’t been keeping track.”

“Over a week for sure,” Dum Dum said. “Maybe even two weeks, two and a half at most.”

Two weeks! The identical days had blurred together into a mass of meaningless time; how long could they live like this? Bucky slid his fingers around his soulmark.

“To tell you the truth, I’d rather be getting shot at in a muddy field,” Dum Dum said. “Least-a-ways there’d be some excitement there, exercise from running around, get the old heart pumping you know?”

Gabe chuckled.

“Yeah, and mud’s good for your skin too, as my sisters like to tell me, so after the running we can roll around for skin treatment to pretty up for the ladies.”

“Ah, women,” Dum Dum said meditatively. “Now there’s a nice thought in this place. I stepped out once with this blond babe; she was a looker, sweet as anything. Had gams up to here, and her knockers, _whew._ ”

Dum Dum made some very descriptive gestures with his hands that had everyone’s eyebrows raising, even Dernier and Falsworth were paying attention. 

“Anyone here been dizzy with a dame?” Dum Dum said. “Personally, I think it might be a loss to womenkind if Timothy Dugan became a married man, so I keep up my noble work—”

“Ahaha, you keep telling yourself that,” Gabe said, punching him lightly on the shoulder. “Now me, I got this girl back at home, Mary Davis, fierce and smart lady, got the best cooking in D.C. I guess you can call me ‘dizzy with my dame.’”

There was some good-natured ribbing and congratulations, relaxing the atmosphere in the cell. It went so far that Falsworth and Dum Dum actually exchanged a civil nod. Bucky found out that the drooping lines on Dernier’s face were more natural to a grin rather than his typical hangdog expression.

“What about you, Bucky?” Dum Dum said.

“Aw, a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell,” he said. “Before you say anything, my ma raised me to be a gentlemen to dames.”

“You’re no fun; what about you, Frenchie? or you, Limey?”

They were deprived of any cross-cultural insights into their allies’ sexual escapades when the Germans arrived much earlier than usual to their cell and prodded them out. Their morning time at the latrines was rushed to the point that Gabe’s habitual calm ran out and he glared at the soldiers surrounding them. 

“What bee went up their asses?” Dum Dum muttered behind Bucky as they were marched to the factory.

“I am forced by curiosity to inquire why there is solely one bee to visit multiple Fritz arses,” Falsworth said from in front of Bucky.

“That’s why they’re so pissed (“Sorry?” Falsworth said. “Angry,” Gabe provided. “Ah, an Americanism, quite.”),” Dum Dum said, lowering his voice but stepping closer to Bucky so Falsworth could still hear. 

Bucky missed whatever Dum Dum said to make the others snicker, as another dizzy spell struck him, sending spots dancing in front of his eyes. All his remaining energy was put towards placing one foot in front of the other and breathing carefully until things stabilized and he could concentrate on other things.

“What do you call the Heinies again?” Dum Dum said. “Fritz? I like that; if anything’s on the fritz, it’s those damn Fritzes.”

“Yeah,” Gabe said. “But when you call them Heinies, it’s another way of calling them all asses—”

Bucky frowned as Gabe abruptly went silent from ahead as he entered the facility. Once Bucky stepped through the door, he immediately darted his gaze around, ignoring the headache it gave him, and forced his sluggish brain to put everything together.

The weapons factory had changed. All the old machinery was gone, replaced by a great deal of shiny metallic and bizarre devices, with white tape marking off rectangles separating the room into sections and leaving a walkway throughout. The only thing that remained familiar was the walkways overhead.

The soldiers, far more than the usual guard, were lined up in a formal position—in a military dress parade, Bucky slowly realized. They raised their hands upward in some odd salute in unison and Bucky’s gaze followed upward in the direction of their attention to two figures on a walkway.

“Heil Hydra!”

The roar echoed around the large space, sending chills down his spine and his heart to pounding. The huddled group of prisoners, all filthy and in different uniforms, were a marked contrast to the clean unity of the faceless, black-clad formation now marching out of the room. Bucky looked up again at the walkways; the two men were gone. 

Once the majority of the soldiers were gone, Bucky could see the line of officers at the front dispersing in a less regimented manner, except for their morning supervisor: Kleiber. His round face was sternly set, his hands clasped behind his back.

“The Obergruppenführer has ordered we begin several new projects and has placed Doktor Zola in charge. It would be in your best interests to work as you’ve never worked before and obey the directions given by the good Doktor’s scientists; the price of failure is unpleasant.”

Bucky found himself herded off to slot glowing blue things into large wheels while a man scribbled on a clipboard and nervously babbled things in German, which Bucky ignored. Even for something as simple as this, his hands still shook and occasionally missed the slots. Bucky tamped down on a queasy feeling in his gut, narrowing his focus to the wheels and blue things.

He jumped a little when a guard poked him—he got the feeling the Kraut was sneering behind his mask—and realized all the wheels were gone and so was the scientists. It was the afternoon shift and Lohmer was striding around on the ground-floor—a very bad sign. It meant he was looking for someone to scream at or beat.

Bucky kept his head very far down; he was guessing on the day that the man lost his position as officer in charge of the facility he wouldn’t be looking to shout.

The guard nudged him toward another station, where men were lifting bars with wheels racked on them. Bucky’s blood ran cold. The metal bars were thick enough without the addition of multiple metal wheels; in his weakened state he wouldn’t last a minute.

His mind was blank, empty of anything but a buzzing that increased as he drew stiffly toward a bar, louder and louder until he couldn’t tell if it was buzzing or the vibrations from his heart. He tried to slam down on his panic, but it wasn’t some separate entity to be shut away, he was panic; he tried to draw on his icy concentration, it was like he’d never held a gun in his life; he thought of Steve and his bond, he couldn’t risk seeing bizarre things or fainting.

His knees bent without his permission, sweat-slick hands slid around the bar and he heaved up, up—shockingly there was no pain—ah, the bar hadn’t budged at all, it was still on the floor dumbly ignoring the strength of his muscles—the guard was starting to fiddle with his stick and the other prisoner on the other end of the bar was muttering, “Hurry up, hurry up, damn you, Lohmer is looking over here—”

Bucky wrapped his hands around the bar, set his feet, and almost screamed as it felt like he was trying to pull something away from a titan’s grasp—now here was the agony he had been expecting—for a moment, as he set the bar on his right shoulder, he knew exactly what it meant to be Atlas under the strain of the world—everything whited out around him—

“Arsch mit Ohren!”

Old battlefield instincts drew Bucky off the floor, even with everything spinning around him. He tried to focus on Lohmer marching over to him, opened his mouth to try to say something, only to cough and cough.

He couldn’t brace against the blows that came, not when he was wheezing and choking, every inch of him worn-down and battered. A lot of shouting started happening as Bucky curled in around himself— _Steve, Steve, how many damn times did I see you curled up like this before you jumped up again, you stupid stubborn bastard_ —and tried to-to endure or something.

He’d always been good at everything, hadn’t he? Everything came easily to his command, including his body. Nothing was impossible: shift into a stance, flicker out in lightning-reaction, curl hands around a pencil, a rifle, smile and swagger around knockin’ it out at a dance, brush his lips and slide his hands against a dame—it was worse to die a slow, eroding death, maybe this was how it would end, should end....

 

“...he’s got broken ribs at the very least, on top of what’s probably pneumonia.”

“That assfucker. That bastard son of a scrooched whore and a crippled boar—”

“As educational as it is to listen to your Yankee vulgarities, none of that is helpful to the current situation.”

“What _can_ we do? Lohmer’s going to kill him tomorrow; beats me why he even stopped today.”

“Il est intéressant qu’il ne le donne pas aux chercheurs; Kleiber disait toujours que si nous ne pouvons pas travailler, ce sera notre sort.”

“Whatever you say, Frog. Now, listen. We have a window of opportunity here. If Jones can grab some of those power cells, Dugan scrounge up some gunpowder—the Fritzes couldn’t have gotten rid of it all in one day—”

“What are you planning?”

“My first day, I overheard the Fritzes complaining about our friend Dernier here; apparently he’s quite the demolition expert, is it true?”

“Donne-moi des bibelots et je peux faire exploser le monde.”

“...Jones, that was a yes? Excellent. We won’t be wanting anything obvious, so if you’re capable of manipulating chemicals to melt metal? Wonderful. I’ve been assigned to work on the other side of the facility; the Fritzes haven’t quite managed to finish moving out all the old equipment, Kleiber spent his time directing that—and so did Lohmer, once he finished being a tosser of the first sort—to the point, we’ll weaken the chain of the crane that I drive and cause a little...accident.”

“Bon. Je l’aime.”

“...this plan is crazy. I’m in.”

“We’re all crazy. Let’s fuck up these Fritzes.”

 

_—boredom, jolt of anxiety, lust, incredulity, nerves, lust, nerves, lust—_  
“—this music is quite something. What’s it called again?”  
“Um, jazz.”  
“That’s right, what a fun little word. Want to dance?”  
“Oh, uh, I can’t dance—”  
“That’s alright, there’s lots more interesting things a girl like me and a bloke like you could get up to—”

 

Bucky awoke when something dropped near his face. His eyes wouldn’t focus for a worrying amount of time, but the object resolved into a hunk of bread. As consciousness spread through him, so did pain. Everything throbbed, a deep seated ache underlying jagged lines in his chest, sharp twinges from all over. God, it seared every time he breathed; he already dreaded his next coughing fit.

He tried to sit up, but moving his arm caused enough pain to make him black out. So he just lay there, listening to the combined noises of a few hundred men, squinting across the cell to the indistinct shapes there. No one was talking, but he could hear chewing and swallowing.

“Hey, Bucky, you awake?”

He tried to say something, but of course it fucking hurt. He settled for a tiny nod, hating how his body had become another prison caging him in.

“Don’t worry about anything, Lohmer won’t be breathing soon enough.”

With that, no one else in the cell said anything until the Krauts came. Bucky couldn’t demand explanations or anything, and the men filed out, Falsworth touching his brow at him in an ironic salute, Dernier with a pleased little twitch along the corners of his mouth.

He lay there with concrete to cushion his bones, wondering what the hell was going on. Why wasn’t he dead, why hadn’t the Krauts dragged him out for work, why were his cellmates so damn chipper?

Boots scraping on the concrete floor made him turn his head as best he could to look at the door. Incomprehensible Kraut babble. Hands seized him and he couldn’t hold back a hoarse shout that scraped his chest and of course he fainted—swooned like a fucking actress in a picture.

When he came to, he was strapped to a table staring up at bright ceiling lights, more fucking German babbling around him. A small head appeared above him, bald except for a few wispy strands, little round spectacles framing an petulantly anxious face that smoothed into a disconcertingly pleased smile when he was Bucky was awake.

“Ah, you are conscious. I am Doctor Zola, and I look forward to our, how shall we say, working together. Your contributions,” he leaned in closer, foul breath puffing onto Bucky’s face. “Will be remembered throughout all history.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay between updates; chapter 2 really burned me out in terms of research and life is kicking me in the face right now. HUGE thank you to everyone who commented; your kind words helped me get back to writing. <3 <3
> 
> I also tentatively started up a [tumblr;](http://kudosmetwice.tumblr.com/) come say hi!
> 
> Next up, probably another Bucky chapter, or maybe we'll see some Steve POV, who knows? Not me because this fic doesn't listen to me anymore.
> 
> Most of my research went into the 3rd Parachute Brigade, Army organization, unit sizes, a Major's duties, and trying to find 1940s nationality slurs for everyone.  
> "Frog" for the French is pretty well known, as is Yank(ee) for Americans. "Rosbif" cracked me up when I found out about it-basically the French response to Brits on insults relating to cuisine.  
> "Brit" was apparently pejorative in the 1940s, and man there were a lot of names for Germans: Heinie/Hermann/Jerry/Kraut/Teutons/Huns/Fritz/Boches, etc.  
> There was some looking at munitions work during ww2, Brummies, mustache styles, pneumonia, trying to find period accurate French, looking for ww2 latrines.  
> Also, identification tags for British soldiers were two fiber discs: a green octogonal one and a round red one.  
> Mini-rant: how the fuck do all the men (esp looking at YOU Dum Dum!) have such pretty, neat mustaches in the film?? Can't see them getting access to razors, shaving cream, and mirrors for some styling. Yep, lareine brings you the real questions about Marvel!


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